path: root/78187-0.txt

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78187 ***




                             THE QUARTERLY
                                 OF THE
                       OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
                                VOLUME 1
                             DECEMBER, 1900
                                NUMBER 4
                          OREGON TRAIL NUMBER.

[Illustration: Seal of the Oregon Historical Society showing crossed
tools and a handshake, with the words 'Peace and Friendship' and
'Incorporated December 17, 1898.']




                               CONTENTS.


        _F. G. Young_—THE OREGON TRAIL                      339
        _Jesse Applegate_—A DAY WITH THE COW COLUMN IN 1843 371
        COL. GEORGE L. CURREY’S TRIBUTE TO THE OX WHIP      384
        _Sam L. Simpson_—THE CAMP FIRES OF THE PIONEERS     385
        _Joaquin Miller_—PILGRIMS OF THE PLAINS             395
        _Joaquin Miller_—PIONEERS OF THE PACIFIC            397
        DOCUMENTS—The Oregon Emigrants, 1843                398


        PRICE: THIRTY-FIVE CENTS PER NUMBER, ONE DOLLAR PER YEAR




                     THE OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY

                      ORGANIZED DECEMBER 17, 1898


                     H. W. SCOTT          PRESIDENT
                     C. B. BELLINGER VICE-PRESIDENT
                     F. G. YOUNG          SECRETARY
                     CHARLES E. LADD      TREASURER
                       GEORGE H. HIMES, Assistant
                               Secretary.


                               DIRECTORS

        THE GOVERNOR OF OREGON, _ex officio_.
        THE SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION, _ex officio_.

           Term Expires at Annual Meeting in December, 1901,
                   F. G. YOUNG, L. B. COX.

           Term Expires at Annual Meeting in December, 1902,
           JAMES R. ROBERTSON, JOSEPH R. WILSON.

           Term Expires at Annual Meeting in December, 1903,
           C. B. BELLINGER, MRS. MARIA L. MYRICK.

           Term Expires at Annual Meeting in December, 1901,
           H. W. SCOTT, MRS. HARRIET K. McARTHUR.

_The Quarterly_ is sent free to all members of the Society. The annual
dues are two dollars. The fee for life membership is twenty-five
dollars.

Contributions to _The Quarterly_ and correspondence relative to
historical materials, or pertaining to the affairs of this Society,
should be addressed to

                                                    F. G. YOUNG,
                                                            _Secretary_.

 EUGENE, OREGON.

Subscriptions for _The Quarterly_, or for the other publications of the
Society, should be sent to

                                          GEORGE H. HIMES,
                                                  _Assistant Secretary_.

 CITY HALL, PORTLAND, OREGON.

[Illustration: Faint hand-drawn map of Oregon showing early trail routes
and transportation lines across the state, with rivers and small place
labels.]




              VOLUME I]      DECEMBER, 1900      [NUMBER 4

                             THE QUARTERLY

                                 OF THE

                       OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY.




                           THE OREGON TRAIL.


The early Oregon pioneers not only gained the first secure foothold for
the American people on the Pacific Coast, but their movement opened the
way to American occupation and in itself counted as an occupation of
that realm for American civilization. They moved across the continent at
an auspicious time, and so were able to influence, if not to shape, the
course of great events touching the widening of the American dominion on
the Pacific. It was all done so quietly, so efficiently, at so
comparatively small cost and without any shock of harrowing disaster,
that the world has yet to connect the momentous results with a cause
seemingly so inadequate.

As the American people come to realize that their distinctively national
achievement so far, next to that of maintaining a national integrity,
has been that of preempting and subduing an adequate dominion and home
for a civilization they will revere the services of those who made the
transcontinental migrations in the thirties, forties and fifties. The
glory that belongs to the participants in those migrations is the
peculiar birthright of the patriotic Oregonian. The passage from the
Atlantic slope to the Pacific of these first American households bearing
the best embers of western civilization must ever stand as a momentous
event in the annals of time.

For twenty-eight years, now, surviving participants in this world event
have annually assembled to recount the incidents of their coming to
Oregon, to live over that trying but hallowed time, to rekindle old
flames of friendship and form new ties on the basis of their common
experiences. At these meetings of the Oregon pioneers there was always
an “occasional address” in which the reminiscences of the immigration of
some particular year were given. As the journal of the association puts
it, the object of the association “should be to collect reminiscences
relating to pioneers and the early history of the territory; to promote
social intercourse, and cultivate the life-enduring friendships that in
many instances had been formed while making the long, perilous journey
of the wide, wild plains, which separated the western boundary of
civilization thirty years ago from the land which they had resolved to
reclaim.” The biographical notices contained in the transactions of
their association all mark this coming to Oregon as a dividing event in
the lives of their subjects. That generation of Oregonians suffered
something like a transfiguration through this movement, which also
widened the nation’s outlook—in making it face a greater sea. These
transforming influences wrought their effects during the summer season
that each successive immigration spent on the Oregon trail, while
journeying in canvas-topped oxen-drawn wagons from the banks of the
Missouri to those of the Willamette. The greatest epochal expansion of
the nation was insured through these migrations at the same time that
the participants were translating their lives to a new sphere.

[Illustration:

  1.—Near the site of Fort Kearney on the Platte. (Part of pontoon
    bridge is used as road fence.)
]

For engaging and vivid detail of experiences in this movement, recourse
must be had to the transactions of the Oregon Pioneer Association, and
to journals kept on the way across the plains. These will ever have an
interest for the heart of man as they show life under heroic impulse and
in trying conditions long sustained. The whole movement Oregonward has
an epic unity, and when its significance has become fully manifest will
challenge the powers of the national poet.

But the movement has not yet, even in its outward aspects, been viewed
as a whole. To mark off its limits in time, in routes taken, in numbers
and population elements involved; to note the main motives, the forms of
characteristic experiences; in a word to make, as it were, a composite
view with relation to national history as a background,—would seem to be
the first step for realizing the due appreciation of the significance of
the work of the Oregon pioneers. A sketch of the outlines of the
movement in its more salient features, then, is what is attempted here,
with the hope that such setting forth of the movement as a whole, with
outlines more or less closely defined, will lead to its being brought
fully into relation with the general course of events of American
history. Until the story of the Oregon movement is thus set forth, the
historians of our national life cannot weave it into its proper
conspicuous relations in their narratives. It has no doubt been largely
due to this lack if the story of this pioneer achievement in available
form that a somewhat undue estimate of Doctor Whitman’s services and the
acceptance of mythical accretions to them have come about. The Whitman
story was early available and was made to do service in accounting for a
larger outcome than facts warranted.

The Oregon migrations effected at one sweep a two thousand mile
extension of the Aryan movement westward in the occupation of the north
temperate zone—“a far-flung” outpost of occupation and settlement. To
appreciate the boldness, intrepidity and consummate effectiveness of
such pioneering we have but to note that no previous extension had
compassed one-fourth this distance. Nor were the conditions in this
instance easy. One continuous stretch of Indian country infested with
most formidable predatory tribes had to be passed through. Conditions
approximating those of a desert had to be faced during a large part of
the migration. There were swift rivers to ford or ferry, and three
mountain ranges to scale. Only one form of the usual difficulties of
pioneer road-making did not appear. There were no extensive forests to
penetrate except on the ridges of the Blue and the Cascade Mountains.

The settlements of the blue grass region of Kentucky, and the Nashville
district, in Western Tennessee, were, when first made, the most isolated
from the main body of the American people. Yet, these had less than a
four-hundred mile stretch between them and the settled region of the
Atlantic slope. No other outward movement of Aryan people ever covered
anything like the distance made by the Oregon pioneers on the Oregon
trail. Measured by the sea voyage, the Oregon settlements were a leap of
seventeen thousand miles.

[Illustration:

  2.—“LONE OR COURT HOUSE ROCK.”
]

Though the Oregon pioneers traced the first trail across the continent,
adapting for sections of it the lines of travel of fur trading
expeditions; yet, were it not for the title of Francis Parkman’s
narrative (which, however, has only the slightest references to anything
pertaining to its title), I am not sure but that the very name would
have been lost to all except Oregonians. The meagerness of Parkman’s
presentation of the transcontinental movement is easily accounted for.
He did not take his trip of roughing it to Fort Laramie and the Black
Hills, in 1846, to see the Oregon pioneers. His plans to write the
history of the new France in America tended to narrow his interest
strictly to aspects of Indian life as they were with the Indian in his
original state. He was concerned solely during his life on the plains to
get that insight into Indian character and customs that he might
interpret the records of the relations of the French with them, and give
his narrative in his great life work truth, life, and color. Had he been
inclined to associate himself with the westward moving trains, and to
enter into their life and thought, his “Oregon Trail” would naturally
have been a final characterization of the migrations up to the stage
they had assumed at that time. There are, however, indications in some
of his references to the pioneers that their necessarily _deshabille_
condition while en route, and the astounding and almost reckless
character of their undertaking were by him set in contrast with the
steady comfortable ways of the New England folk from which he hailed and
the Oregonians correspondingly disparaged. In this he would be bringing
a pioneer phase of civilization into comparison with a more finished
form. The wayfaring pioneers were still marking out wider and more
natural limits for the national home, while the New Englanders were
advancing the arts of life on the original nucleus of national
territory. But who can say to which the nation in its destiny owes the
more?

Two years ago there appeared a book of five hundred and twenty-nine
pages written by Colonels Henry Inman and William F. Cody, bearing the
title, “The Great Salt Lake Trail.” In its preface there is to be
found the following comment on its title: “Over this historical
highway the Mormons made their lonely hegira. * * * Over this route,
also, were made those world renowned expeditions by Fremont,
Stansbury, Lander, and others of lesser fame, to the heart of the
Rocky Mountains, and beyond, to the blue shores of the Pacific Ocean.
Over the same trackless waste the pony express executed those
marvelous feats in annihilating distance, and the once famous overland
stage lumbered along through the seemingly interminable desert of sage
brush and alkali dust—_avant-courieres_ of the telegraph and the
railroad.”

The body of the book touches upon topics ranging in time from Jonathan
Carver’s explorations in 1766-’68 to the building of the Union Pacific
Railroad. Its map lays “The Old Salt Lake Trail” exactly on the route of
the Oregon trail as far as Fort Bridger, in Southwestern Wyoming. But
the Oregon migrations are not hinted at by a single word in the body of
the book. The authors’ account of them could not have been crowded out
by more weighty matters, as all the disjointed fragments of Indian
hunting and fighting and drunken carousal, whether happening on the line
of the trail or not, are crowded in. Either the story of the Oregon
movement during the thirties, forties and fifties was absolutely unknown
to Colonels Inman and Cody, or, if known, thought worthy of relegation
to oblivion by them.

In interviews last summer with people living along the line of the
trail, only those whose experiences extended back to the time of the
Oregon migrations recognized the trail as the Oregon trail. It was
always the “California trail” or the “Mormon trail.”

[Illustration:

  3.—The North Fork of Platte—its sandy bottom exposed.
]

It is, of course, to be conceded that more people traveled this road to
California than to Oregon. But the Oregon movement was first in time. By
it the feasibility of the route was demonstrated, and people susceptible
to the western fever were accustomed to think of the trip across the
plains in a way that brought them when the cry of California gold was
raised, or when as Mormon converts they were longing for a refuge from
molestation. Then, too, the Oregon pioneers not only led the way; they
decided our destiny Pacificward. It is time that history was conferring
its award of justice to them. The highway they opened to the greater
sea, and which their march made glorious, should take its name from them
and thus help to commemorate unto coming generations the momentous
import of their achievement for all the future of mankind.

The transcontinental movement as a march of civilization to the west
shore of the continent was in its incipiency a missionary enterprise.
There is hardly any doubt, however, but that the home-seeking pioneer
would have been on the way just as soon without the initiative of the
missionary heroes and heroines. It is, nevertheless, the lasting glory
of the Presbyterian and Congregational denominations that under the
auspices of their missionary board the first American families
successfully made the passage that was to sweep such a marvelous
movement into its train. The Methodist Episcopal missionary enterprise
antedated all others and played a conspicuous role in the political
organization of the Oregon community, but it was not first in setting up
the American home. So long as it lacked that it could not bear an
American civilization, which was the crucial matter. It was Whitman who
demonstrated the possibility of taking households across the plains, and
this achievement, too, was a decisive initiative.

But how did the impulse to make this dangerous and arduous journey to
the then far-off wilderness of Oregon originate with the missionary and
the home-seeking pioneers? The inception of the Oregon movement in both
its missionary and its pioneering aspects is best understood when viewed
as outbursts of missionary zeal and energy and pioneer daring and
restlessness from vast stores of potential missionary and pioneer spirit
existing in this country in the thirties. Missionary activity in the
direction of Oregon was liberated by something like a spark, or, to
change the metaphor, by a “long-distance” “Macedonian cry.” A delegation
of four Nez Perces Indians from the upper waters of the Columbia arrived
in St. Louis in 1832 in search of “the white man’s Book of Heaven.” An
account of this singularly unique mission was published in the
newspapers of the time. The story was made all the more effective and
thrilling, with those of deep religious sensibilities, through its
including what purported to be a verbatim report of a most pathetic
farewell address made in General Clark’s office by one of the two
surviving members of this mission.

The closing passage of the speech, as it has been handed down, is as
follows:

“We are going back the long, sad trail to our people. When we tell them,
after one more snow, in the big council that we did not bring the Book,
no word will be spoken by our old men, nor by our young braves. One by
one they will rise up and go out in silence. Our people will die in
darkness, and they will go on the long path to other hunting grounds. No
white man will go with them, and no Book of Heaven to make the way
plain. We have no more words.”

The missionary boards of several Protestant denominations were already
establishing foreign missions in Africa, India, and among the western
North American Indians. Hall J. Kelley had been agitating the cause of
the Oregon Indians for half-a-generation. An appeal for missionary help
so pathetic, so unheard of, and withal shedding such luster on those
from whom it came, as was that of the Nez Perces delegation to St.
Louis, could not fail to bring forth a missionary movement towards
Oregon.

[Illustration:

  4.—“CHIMNEY ROCK.”
]

The spirit that materialized in the Oregon pioneer movement was not
kindled by any special spark like that which called forth the missionary
enterprises. Nor was it aroused by anything like the cry of gold that
brought on the mad rush to California in ’49 and the early fifties. The
Oregon migrations were the outcome of cool, calm, reasoned
determination. This characterized the movement collectively as well as
individually.

In a sense, the Oregon movement was in preparation from the time when in
1636 Puritan congregations were led by Hooker and others from the
vicinity of Boston westward through the forests to the banks of the
Connecticut. This initial western movement was communicated along the
Atlantic coast settlements by the Scotch-Irish crossing the Blue Ridge
Mountains in Pennsylvania, and by the Virginians penetrating to the
Shenandoah Valley. Some would say that an instinct to move west has been
growing in strength among civilized peoples since about 1000 B. C., when
the Phœnicians moved west on the Mediterranean to found Carthage, and
the Greeks to plant colonies in southern Italy and at Marseilles.

So largely had pioneering been the mode of life of those who were living
in the western zone of settlement in the United States in 1840 that it
was almost a cult with them. The traditions of each family led through
the Cumberland Gap or west to Pittsburg and down the Ohio, or along the
line of the Great Lakes. Hon. W. Lair Hill, in his “Annual Address”
before the Pioneer Association in 1883, fitly characterizes the people
among whom the Oregon movement took its rise. “The greater number of
them were pioneers by nature and occupation, as their fathers had been
before them. In childhood the story of their ancestors’ migrations from
the east to the west, and then to the newer west was their handbook of
history. Homer or Virgil, of whom few of them had ever heard, could have
rehearsed no epic half so thrilling to their ears as the narratives of
daring adventure and hairbreadth escapes, which, half true and half
false, ever form the thread of frontier history. They knew nothing of
Hector and Achilles, but they knew of Daniel Boone, who, Lord Byron
said, ‘was happiest among mortals anywhere,’ whom civilization drove out
of Pennsylvania by destroying the red deer and black bear, and who,
after some years of solid comfort in his log cabin amid the wilds of
Kentucky, was again pursued and overtaken by the same relentless enemy
and compelled to retire into the Missouri wilderness, beyond the
Mississippi; and who, even in that distant retreat, was soon forced to
say to his friend and companion, according to current anecdote, ‘I was
compelled to leave Kentucky because people came and settled so close
around me I had no room to breathe. I thought when I came out here I
should be allowed to live in peace; but this is all over now. A man has
taken up a farm right over there, within twenty-five miles of my door.’
Of Boone, and such as Boone, most of them who founded the commonwealth
of Oregon, knew much more than of the great names of literature,
statesmanship, or arms, and their minds dwelt fondly on the exploits of
the frontiersman, whether in the contests with the savages or the chase.
More familiar with the log cabin than with the palace, with the rifle
than with the spindle and loom, with saddle than with the railway, they
felt cramped when the progress of empire in its westward way put
restraint upon those habits of life to which they were accustomed.”

[Illustration:

  5.—“CASTLE AND STEAMBOAT ROCKS.”
]

Knowledge of a “new country” was sure to create in them an almost
irrepressible longing to move on. Such natures as these furnished the
best culture conditions in which to develop an Oregon movement with the
reports explorers and travelers brought from the far Pacific Coast
region. Such Oregon material had early been disseminated among these
susceptible people. The journal of the Lewis and Clark expedition was
published in 1814 and distributed far and wide as a government document.
Pioneers speak of reading it as boys and of becoming permanently
interested in the Oregon Country. The journal of Patrick Gass, a
sergeant in the company of Lewis and Clark, fell into the hands of
others and stirred their imaginations. From 1817 on until 1832 Hall J.
Kelley, a Boston schoolmaster, was compiling and distributing
information designed to awaken a desire to join in a movement to
establish a civilized community in Oregon. His society is said to have
had thirty-seven agents scattered through the union. An Oregon question
became a subject of negotiation between Great Britain and the United
States in 1818. These negotiations were renewed in 1824, 1827 and 1842.
The occupation of Oregon was proposed in congress in 1821. The subject
was kept before congress almost continuously until 1827, and again from
1837 on. The proposed legislation elicited exhaustive reports and warm
discussions, which were published in the newspapers of the land. The
bill of Dr. Lewis F. Linn, senator from Missouri, introduced in 1842,
with its provision for a grant of six hundred and forty acres of land to
every actual male settler, was naturally a most potent cause of
resolutions to go to Oregon. The fact that during all these years Great
Britain disputed our right to claim the whole of the Oregon Country only
added to the ardor of some who thought of going thither.

Soon sources of fresh information brought direct from Oregon became
available. St. Louis was the winter rendezvous of representatives of fur
companies and independent trappers who were operating in the Rocky
Mountains. These came in contact with officers and employees of the
Hudson’s Bay Company, and from them secured much information about
Oregon. Nathaniel J. Wyeth conducted two expeditions overland to the
Lower Columbia between 1832 and 1836. Mr. William N. Slacum, who had
been commissioned by President Jackson to visit the North Pacific Coast
to conduct explorations and investigations among the inhabitants of that
region, reported in 1837. Irving’s Astoria was brought out in 1836, and
his Adventures of Captain Bonneville in 1837. In 1838 Jason Lee, the
Methodist missionary, returned to the States, and talked Oregon wherever
he went. His lecture on Oregon in Peoria, Illinois, that year netted an
expedition of thirteen or fourteen persons for Oregon the next. The
leader of this party, Thomas J. Farnham, returned to the East, and in
1841 published a book of travels, which had a wide circulation. Dr.
Elijah White, for several years associated with the Methodist mission
enterprise, but who had returned to his home in New York, received an
appointment in 1842 as sub-Indian agent for Oregon. He immediately began
a canvass for immigrants to Oregon. His party, made up mainly of those
found on the Missouri border ready to start, added one hundred and
twenty-seven to the American population in Oregon. During this same year
Commodore Wilkes’ naval exploring expedition to Oregon returned and
reported. Early in this year, too, Fremont’s overland party was
organized, and was on the trail a short distance in the rear of Doctor
White’s pioneer party. On February 1, 1843, the Linn bill passed the
senate. All the missionaries were sending back letters giving glowing
accounts of the attractions of Oregon. The famous winter ride of Doctor
Whitman from Oregon to Missouri was made in the winter of 1842–3. He did
go to Washington and he urged the importance of American interests in
Oregon upon President Tyler and some of the members of his cabinet.
Returning west in the spring of 1843, he was at the Shawnee mission
school, near Westport, Missouri, while the great migration of 1843 was
forming and filing by. The sight reassured him that Oregon was to be
occupied by American citizens. His thought seemed no longer mainly
concerned with the pioneers getting to Oregon. There would be no trouble
about that. His plans reached forward to include the conditions of a
stable and progressive civilization there. His letters at this time,
after mentioning the number of emigrants, turn to matters that would
determine their condition as proposed settlers. He says: “A great many
cattle are going, but no sheep, from a mistake of what I said in
passing.” And again: “Sheep and cattle, but especially sheep, are
indispensable for Oregon. * * * I mean to impress the Secretary of War
that sheep are more to Oregon’s interests than soldiers.” Doctor
Whitman’s influence had probably not been decisive with many of the
pioneers, possibly not with any, in getting them started, but all the
leaders of that great immigration testify that his services as pilot and
counsellor were most valuable in getting them through.

[Illustration:

  6.—“SCOTT’S BLUFF.”
]

The facts so far marshalled on the origin of the pioneer movement to
Oregon disclose the existence of a people in the Mississippi Valley
competent for the undertaking, and on general principles not disinclined
towards it, whose thought, moreover, had been arrested by some unique
advantages claimed for the Oregon country. But the Oregon movement, like
most migrations, has most light thrown on its origin and motive by an
inquiry into the conditions that made the old home undesirable, and in
some cases even unbearable.

Not a few came from Missouri, Kentucky and other border slave states
because they were not in sympathy with the institution of slavery. Their
aversion to slave owning placed them at a great disadvantage in those
states. Their families were not recognized as socially the equals of the
more influential portion of society. They were accustomed to labor, and
slavery brought a stigma upon labor. In the cultivation of tobacco and
hemp, the main articles of export, the owner of slave labor had a
decided advantage. The employer of free labor found it exceedingly
difficult to make ends meet. Snubbed in a social way, worsted in
industrial competition, in individual cases they were even mobbed when
they tried to express their anti-slavery sentiments at the polls. Some
of the more nervous of the slave-owning population, too, were impelled
to seek relief in the same movement from the constant dread of a negro
insurrection.

The “fever and ague” was a dread visitant to very many engaged in
turning over the virgin soil of the Mississippi Valley. In Oregon they
would be free from this curse, so the “fever and ague,” with not a few,
brought on the “Oregon fever.” The frequent recurrence of the awful
scourge of the cholera in the towns of the middle west in the late
forties and early fifties made many, in the hope of safety, more than
willing to brave the dangers and hardships of the journey to Oregon. The
warning signals of approaching old age no doubt were the deciding
influence with some who set out as modern Ponce de Leons in search of
fountains of renewed youth in Oregon.

[Illustration:

  7.—“OLD BEDLAM”—SITE OF FORT LARAMIE.
]

Monetary disturbances had made business stagnant all over the country
from 1837 to 1841. Many had gone to the wall, and had been compelled to
see their homes turned over to others. The hard times were felt keenest
in the then farthest west. They were so far inland that commercial
intercourse with the rest of the world was almost totally cut off. What
traffic they had was carried on by slow, laborious and expensive
processes. Railroad building had not progressed so as to give a hope,
hardly even an intimation, of its wonderful solution of the problem of
maintaining a high civilization far inland. By going to Oregon they
would, as they thought of it, again be on the open shores of the greater
sea, within easy reach of the highway of the civilizations of the world.
Not often, perhaps, were their motives formulated. These were allowed to
rest in their minds in the most naive form of impulse. Col. Geo. B.
Currey, in his “Occasional Address” before the Pioneer Association, in
1887, endorses the following as the best reason he ever got. It was, as
he says, “from a genuine westerner,” who said he came “because the thing
wasn’t fenced in, and nobody dared to keep him out.”

The western border of Missouri was the natural jumping off place for the
plunge into the wilderness. The settlements there had extended out like
a plank beyond the line of the border elsewhere. The Ohio and the
Missouri, with a short stretch of the Mississippi, had furnished the
line of least resistance to the westward movement.

Each recurring spring tide from 1842 on witnessed the gathering of hosts
at points on the Missouri, from Independence, near the confluence of the
Kansas with the Missouri, north to what is now Council Bluffs. They were
enamored with one idea, that of making homes in far away Oregon. This
part of the border was also the starting line for the California and the
Mormon migrations. The California movement was only sporadic until 1849.
This was seven years after the Oregon movement had become regular. The
Mormons first struck across the continent in 1847.

Independence and Westport, just south of the Missouri’s great bend to
the east, were the gateway of the earliest regular travel and traffic
across the plains. These towns are now the suburbs of Kansas City. The
Oregon migrations of 1842 and 1843 were formed exclusively in this
vicinity. The old Santa Fe trail led by these settlements. From these
points, too, the fur trading companies conducted expeditions annually to
the upper waters of the Green River beyond the Rocky Mountains. The
route was up the south side of the Kansas River some fifty miles, then
turning to the right, the river was forded or ferried and a general
northwest course adhered to, more direct for Oregon.

Beginning in 1844 Saint Joseph, then a thriving border town, situated on
the river some fifty miles to the north of the first jumping off places,
became an important fitting out place. Those who took steamboat passage
to the border would naturally wish to make as much of the distance to
Oregon in that way as possible. The vicinity of Saint Joseph seemed to
furnish excellent facilities for securing the necessary ox teams and
other needs for the trip. The Saint Joseph route, too, was a more direct
one for those coming across the country from Iowa, Illinois and Indiana.
After 1850 the Council Bluffs’ route had the largest transcontinental
travel. Weston and old Fort Kearney, the present Nebraska City, both on
the Missouri, the former between Independence and Saint Joseph and the
latter between Saint Joseph and Council Bluffs were minor points of
departure. Smaller companies would cross the river wherever there was a
ferry.

[Illustration:

  8.—The Trail leading down to bottom lands of the Sweetwater.
]

Steamboating on the treacherous Missouri during those spring seasons
while the tide of emigration was strongly westward set is given a lurid
hue in the journals of the emigrants. The river route was the natural
one for all coming from Ohio and the states to the east, also for many
coming from Indiana.

One entry made during this part of the trip in 1852 reads as follows:
“We have a bar on our boat, too, and that is visited about as often as
any other place I know of. A son of temperance is a strange animal on
this river, I can assure you. I think there are three or four sons on
the boat, and the rest, about five hundred people, like a dram as often
as I would like to drink a little water. * * * We get a little scared
sometimes, for we hear of so many boats blowing up. There was another
boat blown up at Lexington last Saturday and killed one hundred and
fifty persons, the most of which were emigrants for California and
Oregon. These things make us feel pretty squally, I can assure you, but
it is not the way to be scared beforehand. So we boost our spirits up
and push on. * * * Got to Lexington at 12 o’clock. There we found the
wrecks of the boat that blew up five days ago. There were about two
hundred people aboard, and the nearest we could learn about forty
persons escaped unhurt, about forty were wounded and the balance were
killed.”

The man who kept this journal fitted out with a company at Saint Joseph.
The company planned to drive up the east side of the Missouri and cross
at old Fort Kearney. But, finding the roads too bad on that route, they
made for a ferry ten miles north of Saint Joseph. I quote from his
account of their experiences in getting across the river: “Went up to
the ferry. Mr. H—‘s and Mr. S—’s wagons went over safe. Then Mr. S—’s
family wagon and five yoke of cattle and all of Mr. S—’s family except
two boys went on the ferry boat, and when they were about one-half way
across the boat began to sink. They tried to drive the cattle off, but
could not in time to save the boat from sinking. My family are still on
the east side and I—S— with his teams. We witnessed the scene and could
do nothing. Mrs. S— and the baby and next youngest were all under water,
but the men of the boat got into the river and took them out, and the
rest of the family got upon the wagon cover and saved themselves from
drowning. A Mr. R— jumped overboard and thought he could swim to shore,
but was drowned. He was one of Mr. S—’s hired hands. By the assistance
of one of the other boats the rest were saved, but we thought from where
we were that it was impossible that they could all be saved. Well, I
paid a man fifteen cents for taking my wife and little children across
in a skiff. They have no skiff at the ferry, but they have three good
ferryboats that they work by hand. But the people here are as near
heathens as they can be, and they go for shaving the emigrants, and then
they spend it for whiskey and get drunk and roll in it. But we are all
over on the west shore of the Missouri and in Indian territory.”

For those congregated hosts, encamped each early spring at different
points along the banks of the Missouri, and intent as soon as grass had
grown to be sufficient for their stock to sally forth on a two thousand
mile passage to the Valley of the Willamette, the natural features of
the continent pointed out just one general route to travel. This road,
so clearly marked out by the configuration of the country for all using
their mode of conveyance, lay up the Valley of the Platte; its
tributary, the Sweetwater; through South Pass; across to the Valley of
the Snake, the tributary of the Columbia; following down the course of
the Snake to its great bend to the north; across to the Columbia; down
the Columbia to their destination.

[Illustration:

  9.—“INDEPENDENCE ROCK.”
]

Those sections of the trail which constitute connecting links, as it
were, to the grander portions, can be accounted for almost as clearly as
the main sections can. Forage and water must be regularly available to
those traveling with horses, mules or oxen. These must be found in great
abundance by those who are driving considerable droves over long
stretches of arid wastes. In summer months, on the unsettled parched
plains, these resources were insured only along river or creek bottoms.
So in striking out from Independence or Saint Joseph for the Valley of
the Platte to the north, to economize in the distance traveled to the
Oregon goal, and insure supplies of the prime requisites—good water and
grass—their course would be such as to bring them to nightly camps on
the banks of one of the numerous streams flowing into the Kansas.
Passing one they would make for a higher point on the next to the west
so as to keep in a more direct line for Oregon. Fuel, so necessary for
preparing their meals, was in that region found only on the banks of
these streams. Along the Platte, the North Fork, and the Sweetwater
“buffalo chips” sufficed fairly well the need of fuel, except the night
was wet. In moving from the South Pass to the basin of the Columbia,
mountainous country made a direct route impracticable. In the detour to
the southwest the valleys of the tributaries of the Upper Green were
utilized, and particularly the most convenient northwest course of the
Bear River. The details of the course in this detour were determined by
the stepping stones, as it were, of water, grass and wood. These were
found in that desert region, too, only in the river and creek bottoms.
On issuing from the South Pass, then, the valleys of the Little Sandy,
Big Sandy, and the Green itself, had to be followed, with such crossings
from one to the other as were feasible, and were in the interests of
economy in distance, until they struck a tributary coming in from the
west, up which a passage could be made and the divide crossed, bringing
them into the Valley of the Bear, a part of the Great Salt Lake Basin.
The Valley of the Bear has a general northwest direction of some
seventy-five miles from where they usually entered it. It was in every
way a natural road to them to the point where it makes its bend to the
south. At this bend was the first fork made in early times by the
California trail’s turning off to the south. The divide at this point
between the Basin of the Great Salt Lake and the Valley of the Snake was
comparatively easy. The Snake River Valley, with its barren wastes, deep
precipitous canyons, sharp lava rocks, made a trying portion of the
route. There were several optional routes. None so acceptable as the
Platte Valley had furnished. To follow the Snake in its long bend to the
north would have led them far out of their way, so they took the
available valleys of the Burnt and Powder rivers that led them farthest
on their way towards the westerly flowing Umatilla, a tributary of the
Columbia. They thus not only kept on in a comparatively direct line
towards the Valley of the Willamette, but were also afforded water,
grass and wood so necessary for further endurance of the now well fagged
transcontinental wayfarers. But the Blue Mountains lay across this short
cut and gave them their first real experience in climbing steep mountain
sides. From the crest of these mountains the way to their goal lay down
hill, except they chose a road across the Cascade Mountains. But whether
they took the Barlow Road or dared the dangers of the gorge of the
Columbia, the darkest, sternest trials were yet to be faced by the now
weak and famished pioneers. They were, however, veterans now, and if
succored with fresh supplies from settlers in the Willamette Valley and
the strength of their cattle sufficed, no difficulties, however
stupendous, could daunt them.

[Illustration:

  10.—WEST END OF INDEPENDENCE ROCK.
]

On the whole, those home-seeking pioneers, as they lay encamped on the
banks of the Missouri, could congratulate themselves that no specially
stupendous natural obstacles had been interposed in that immense stretch
that lay between them and their destination. There was only the
interminableness of it, and the facts that it was to be entered upon
while the fierce pelting spring storms of wind, rain and hail were
liable to be of daily and nightly occurrence; that muddy sloughs would
cause breakdowns, and freshet-swollen streams would be fraught with
danger; that there would then be four months in which the fierce
burning, blistering sun would have them at its mercy, and a dense,
stifling dust would enhance their misery during the midday hours to the
point of wretchedness, and no bathroom in the evening in which to find
relief; that in the later and almost final days of the journey they
would probably be exposed in approximate nakedness to the searching
blasts of the oncoming winter, fortunate if they were not caught and
held fast in mountain snows. Withal, they knew it would be a lumbering
trudge with ox teams that would take them all summer and far into the
autumn.

Each recurring spring season family or neighborhood groups who had
determined to try their fortunes in Oregon would move out to one of the
points of departure on the Missouri border. They would soon find
themselves a part of a larger aggregation. Generally there was no more
prearrangement for this meeting than there is among birds that flock for
a migration. All who constituted the company from any one point had
simply selected the same jumping off place.

When the grass had grown abundant enough to furnish subsistence for
their stock and draft animals, those who were ready with their outfit
would begin to file out on the prairie trails converging upon the main
Oregon road. After having traveled a day or two a halt was called by
those in advance to await the coming up of others who proposed to
undertake the same trip with themselves. The American instinct for
organization would then assert itself, and there was occasion for its
activity. They were in an Indian country. It was not wise to tempt the
predatory propensities of the savages by too much straggling in their
traveling or by too much unwariness in guarding their cattle and horses.
In order to avoid molestation by prowling bands of Pawnees, Otoes,
Cheyennes and Sioux, through whose ranges the trail east of the Rockies
passed, it was necessary to travel in companies of some size and with
such discipline as to be able to establish an effective guard at night
and to make some demonstration of force when encountering considerable
bands of Indian warriors.

There was much economy, too, in bunching their several droves of loose
stock into a single herd, in having a single lookout for selecting
camping places, in the help that each would receive in case of accidents
that all were liable to. Very essential, too, were organization and
discipline when they came to a bank of a large stream across which their
trail led. With the earlier migrations before printed guide books were
available, organization was necessary to secure the services of a pilot.

[Illustration:

  11.—“DEVIL’S GATE,”

  Showing dam for leading out an irrigating ditch.
]

The first large migrations—those of 1843 and 1844, and even of
1845—erred in attempting to go as one compact body. The difficulty of
securing adequate grazing was much enhanced as the company increased in
size. From this fact and the further fact that in case of a hitch or
accident of any kind in a large company, many would be delayed who could
be of no service in getting things fixed up for a fresh start, it
resulted that twenty or thirty wagons were the maximum limit to the size
of companies that did not chafe under their organization. In later years
six or eight wagons were a normal number for a company. Even in the
earlier migrations, when the Upper Sweetwater was reached and the danger
from the Indians was measurably past, the large companies would divide
up into sections. The earlier migrations, too, took precautions that no
person attached himself to the train unless he was furnished with such
resources as to rations and transportation that he would not likely
become a common burden.

The records of the migrations give ample corroboration to the truth of
the adage, “Uneasy lies the head, etc.,” and yet these privately penned
diaries disclose comparatively little bickering or unwholesome feeling,
notwithstanding the severe strain human nature was under in the
conditions of this four, five, and sometimes six months’ passage.
Whenever conditions developed making advisable a division of the body
into two or more, the division was made, and all was smooth again. The
documentary material printed in this number of the Quarterly throws
light on this phase of their experience and depicts the unique
proceedings of the pioneers of 1843 in effecting an organization.

The type of the transcontinental pioneer changed materially after the
gold-seeker was in the majority. From 1849 on the diarist’s account is
not devoid of the tragical. “These plains try and tell all the dark
spots in men,” says Rev. Jesse Moreland in his journal of the trip from
Tennessee to Oregon in 1852. He describes evidence of three executions
for murder by hanging. He says: “As they had nothing to make a gallows
out of, they took two wagon tongues, put them point to point and set a
chair in the middle, and the man stood on the chair till the rope was
tied, and then the chair was taken from under him. This is the third we
have heard of being hanged.”

Before 1849, while the Oregon movement still constituted the great part
of the transcontinental travel, and a fierce commercial spirit was not
yet dominant, the humanity of the pioneers seemed to stand remarkably
well the strain incident to the experiences on the plains. Their
journals do not reveal half the irritation and demoralization that the
accounts of Parkman and of Coke do in companies that had vastly better
outfits and were passing over the same routes.

The average company of immigrants in pulling through the miry sloughs of
the Missouri bottom lands in early spring, with only partly broken ox
teams, would break a wagon tongue, an axle tree, or a wheel, and suffer
more or less exasperating delay. The fierce spring storms of rain and
hail would play havoc with their tent coverings, and drench and pelt all
who must stand outside to prevent the teams and stock from stampeding.
These freshets would make impassable, for the time being, the numerous
streams of the Kansas and Nebraska prairies. With the feeling that they
must not over-exert their teams mere trifles even were allowed to delay
them during the first four or five hundred miles of the journey.

Except they had some one like a Doctor Whitman with them to persistently
urge them to “travel, travel,” as the only condition of getting through,
there would be too much loitering in the early stages of the journey.
Those who entered upon the trip in later years had more nearly an
adequate sense of the vastness of the distance they must cover, and
wasted no time in the initial stages.

[Illustration:

  12.—Gap just south of Devil’s Gate—used for the Trail.
]

Especially the migration of 1849, and to some degree those of 1850 and
1852, were in deepest dismay over the presence among them of the
dreadful scourge of cholera. The trail was lined in places along the
south side of the Platte through the width of rods with mounds of
freshly made graves after these migrations had passed.

The Hon. F. A. Chenoweth, in his “Occasional Address” before the Oregon
Pioneer Association, in 1882, gives the following account of the ravages
of the cholera among the trains of 1849:

“But the incidents of hardship which I have noticed were the merest
trifles compared to the terrible calamity that marked with sadness and
trailed in deep desolation over that ill-fated emigration. Very soon
after the assembled throng took up its march over the plains the
terrible wave of cholera struck them in a way to carry utmost terror and
dismay into all parts of the moving mass.

The number of fatally stricken, after the smoke and dust were cleared
away, was not numerically so frightful as appeared to those who were in
the midst of it. But the name “cholera” in a multitude unorganized and
unnumbered is like a leak in the bottom of a ship whose decks are
thronged with passengers. The disturbed waters of the ocean, the angry
elements of nature, when aroused to fury, are but faint illustrations of
the terror-stricken mass of humanity, when in their midst are falling
with great rapidity their comrades—the strong, the young and the old—the
strength and vigor of youth melting away before an unseen foe. All this
filled our ranks with the utmost terror and gloom. This terrible malady
seemed to spend its most deadly force on the flat prairie east of and
about Fort Laramie.

One of the appalling effects of this disease was to cause the most
devoted friends to desert, in case of attack, the fallen one. Many a
stout and powerful man fought the last battle alone on the prairie. When
the rough hand of the cholera was laid upon families they rarely had
either the assistance or the sympathy of their neighbors or traveling
companions.

There was one feature mixed with all this terror that afforded some
degree of relief, and that was that there was no case of lingering
suffering. When attacked, a single day ordinarily ended the strife in
death or recovery. A vast amount of wagons, with beds and blankets, were
left by the roadside, which no man, not even an Indian, would approach
or touch through fear of the unknown, unseen destroyer.

While there were sad instances of comrades deserting comrades in this
hour of extreme trial, I can not pass this point of my story without
stating that there were many instances of heroic devotion to the sick,
when such attention was regarded as almost equivalent to the offering up
of the well and healthy for the mere hope of saving the sick and dying.”

Not a few who had purposed to go to California that year turned off on
the Oregon road to escape the contagion which the dense crowd seemed to
afford this disease. Excepting in these cholera years and in 1847 there
were only infrequent cases of mountain fever and forms of dysentery that
were developed in the alkali regions of the mountains.

[Illustration:

  13.—“DEVIL’S GATE,” AS SEEN FROM ABOVE.
]

A train of pioneers with sensible outfit emerging into the valley of the
Platte in a season free from the cholera affliction could almost make it
for a time a grand pleasure excursion. The heat was not yet oppressive,
the roads good, the air exhilarating, the boundless expanse of green
undulating prairie under crystal skies filled them with a sense of
freedom. The exciting buffalo hunt was soon on and afforded them a
welcome addition to a diet exceedingly unvaried at best. After the usual
trudge during the day amid a panorama not yet monotonous the wagons
would be driven to form approximately a circle—the end of the tongue or
the front wheel of one lapping the hind wheel of the wagon in front,
according as a more or less spacious corral was desired. The oxen would
be unyoked and taken to water and then to the selected grazing spot.
Fires would be kindled alongside each wagon outside of the corral for
preparing the evening meal. After it was partaken of there would be an
hour or two before darkness settled down upon them. Then the cattle
would be brought within the corral, if there was the least apprehension
of danger, and all except the guards for the first watch and possibly
the matrons with multitudinous family cares would quickly surrender
themselves to sleep. But congenial groups of young people would
generally have a social hour or two. A blanket or extra wagon covering
was thrown on the ground beside the wagon, and, when rain threatened,
spread under the wagon. (Most were probably without tents other than the
canvas tops of their wagons.) This with something for a covering
sufficed for the beds of the young men and boys. In the morning at a
given signal all were astir—and, if the cattle had not strayed during
the night or been stampeded by Indians, breakfast over, everything was
soon in readiness for falling in, each in his appointed place, and
taking up the march that should bring them a day nearer to their Oregon
home. But this idyllic succession of days very soon developed a very
seamy side.

The sun’s rays became more and more scorching in their fierceness, the
plains assumed a dull, leaden grayish aspect. The sagebrush and cactus
took the place of the waving grass. The burning sand and stifling dust
became deeper. These the west wind would raise into a cloud continuous
from morning until night. This cloud of sand and dust particles beating
against them at a terrific velocity they had to face all day. Soon eyes
and lips were sore. To relieve the uncomfortable feeling that the
parching air gave the lips they would unwisely be moistened and the
soreness thus extended and deepened. Soon everything was obdurately
begrimed. Rags then were in evidence. Shoes worn so as to no longer
protect the feet. In the dry, scorching air the wagons would develop
loose joints and lose their tires.

The monotony was relieved by lying by a day now and then during which
the women would wash and mend the clothes and the men repair wagons and
hunt buffalo, the meat of which would be jerked to furnish a supply
after they had passed beyond the limits of the buffalo country. The
buffalo did not commonly range west of the Lower Sweetwater.

The experiences which the buffalo gave them were not limited to the fine
sport of hunting him and the delicious feasts his steaks afforded. His
presence seemed to kindle into life the old ancestral wildness of the ox
and the horse. Without the least warning some sedate member of a team
would raise his head and give the old racial snort of freedom. This
would kindle the same spark in every animal of the train, and away they
would stampede with wagons, inmates and all, and not to be stopped until
utterly exhausted. In these stampedes people would be run over, bones
would be broken, oxen dehorned, their legs broken, and things demolished
generally. The simple-minded pioneer with any tendency to personify
could not help but believe that the devil had gotten into his hitherto
always tractable animals. I quote a pioneer’s account of a stampede,
though he does not ascribe it to the presence or influence of the
buffalo, as is almost always done: “After passing Devil’s Gate, a
beautiful stretch of road lay before us. All at once the teams broke
into a run—something started them, no one seemed to know what. It was a
regular stampede as to our team. Father and mother were walking; I was
walking also, and some of the children were in the wagon. Away the team
went, the hardest and the wildest running I ever saw. When they stopped
and we caught up with them, we found the children were not hurt, but the
two wheelers were down and one of them dead. It took our team a long
time to get over the scare.”

[Illustration:

  14.—“DEVIL’S GATE,” FROM SOME DISTANCE ABOVE.
]

There was still another condition in which the spirit of the buffalo
made the pioneer show deference to it. This happened when a great horde
of buffalo was on a stampede bearing down upon an emigrant train that
happened to be passing across its trail. The moment was almost enough to
bring dismay to the pioneer. Either the teams of the train were urged
into something of a stampede to get out of line of the horde’s advance,
or a corral was formed and volleys fired into the impending mass to
divide it so as to leave the corral a safe island between a destructive
flood rolling by on either hand.

Distressing accidents must almost of necessity befall them from their
carrying their loaded guns commingled with household goods on their
wagons. It is not strange that at least half of the journals should have
records of fatalities thus caused. Under the law of mathematical
probabilities, with the frequent occasion there was to remove gun or
blanket thus intermixed, while the members of the family were standing
around the wagon, accidents must occur. The small boy of the family
during this four or five months’ trip had very many occasions to clamber
out of and into the wagon while it was in motion. He, too, would come to
grief with a broken leg. Any ordinary fracture, however, even though
there were no surgeon at hand, would be attended to, so that no
deformity resulted. If the case was one seeming to require an amputation
“a butcher knife and an old dull hand saw” were improvised as surgical
instruments. But I have not found that a patient survived such an
operation and got well. The other great epochal events of family life,
marriages and births, were not infrequent on the trail, and seemed to
cause little distraction.

The experiences of the pioneers in crossing the rivers in the line of
the trail were very diverse. It is reported of one of the migrations
that they were not compelled to ferry until they reached the Des Chutes
in Oregon. But the migration of 1844 had a serious time even with the
Black Vermillion and Big Blue, tributaries of the Kansas. Where logs
were available they were hollowed out and catamaran rafts made so as to
fit the wheels of a wagon. Sometimes the best wagon boxes would be
selected and caulked and used as flatboats. Where buffalo skins were
plentiful they would be stretched around the wagon box to make it
water-tight. In later stages of the journey, after their teams were more
reliable, it was a common practice to raise the wagon beds several
inches above the bolsters, if the depth of the stream required it,
couple several teams into a train with the most reliable in front on a
lead-rope, and drivers along the down-stream side of the other teams.
They would then ford as trains. After the rush in 1849 ferries were
established at the more important crossings, whose owners reaped rich
harvests.

[Illustration:

  15.—The deeply worn Trail along the Sweetwater.
]

Their route had no rich diversity of scenic grandeur. There are most
impressive natural features along the line of it, but with their slow
mode of travel one phase became exceedingly monotonous before another
was reached. There were the vastness and solitude of the prairies and
plains, the transparency of the atmosphere that gave magnificent sweep
of view. Along the North Fork of the Platte stood great sentinel rocks
with interesting sculptured proportions. Among these are the Lone or
Court House Rock, Chimney Rock, Castle Rock, Steamboat Rock, and Scott’s
Bluff. Farther along on their journey they come to Independence Rock and
Devil’s Gate on the Sweetwater, one a huge basaltic mound upon which
with tar or with iron chisels they would register their names; the other
a most unique breach in a granitic range with sides two hundred feet
high, through which the Sweetwater flows. A week or two later they would
have the exhilarating sense of standing on the backbone of the continent
in South Pass, with the towering Wind River Mountains to their right and
the Oregon buttes to their left. A few miles on they would drink from
the Pacific springs and know they were in what was then called Oregon.
Scenery most unique was still before them on their way. Some of it, like
the panorama from the divide between the Green and the Bear rivers and
the Soda Springs, they would enjoy. But their march from the South Pass
on was a retreat. Oxen would fall helpless in their yokes, wagons would
become rickety beyond repair. The trail was strewn with wreckage, and
the stench from the dead cattle was appalling. The watering places along
the Snake were contaminated by the stock that had perished. As soon as
they reached the Blue Mountains their stock was safe from starvation,
but the exertion required of their way-worn and weak oxen on the steep
grades now before them was the last straw often that these creatures now
could not bear. They could not let them recruit; the season was far
advanced towards winter; they must press on.

Data for determining the numbers that came across the plains to Oregon
during the successive years are as yet very unsatisfactory. The
estimates given below for 1842 and 1843 are well founded, but the
others, especially from 1847 on, are from no very tangible basis.

At the close of 1841 the Americans in Oregon numbered possibly four
hundred.

          The immigration of 1842 estimated from  105 to   137
          The immigration of 1843 estimated from  875 to 1,000
          The immigration of 1844 estimated about          700
          The immigration of 1845 estimated about        3,000
          The immigration of 1846 estimated about        1,350

The above figures are taken quite closely from those given by Elwood
Evans in his address before the Pioneer Association in 1877. I make the
immigration of 1844, however, seven hundred, instead of four hundred and
seventy-five, as he gives it.

            The immigration of 1847 between 4,000 and 5,000
            The immigration of 1848 about               700
            The immigration of 1849 about               400
            The immigration of 1850 about             2,000
            The immigration of 1851 about             1,500
            The immigration of 1852 about             2,500

No doubt this one summer on the plains was an ordeal under which some
sensitive natures were strained and weakened for life. It may be, too,
that living for five or six months, as families, on the simplest, barest
necessities of life, fixed standards of living lower than they otherwise
would have been. The effect, however, on strong, resourceful natures of
these months on the plains could not have been other than salutary. The
pioneers, when they started, were most distinctively American in their
characteristics. As such they needed to be socialized. No better school
could have been devised than the organization and regimen of the trip
across the plains for socializing their natures.

                                                            F. G. YOUNG.

[Illustration:

  16.—The “Three Crossings” of the Sweetwater.
]




                   A DAY WITH THE COW COLUMN IN 1843.

                           By JESSE APPLEGATE.

   (Read before the Oregon Pioneer Association in 1876; reprinted from
                     transactions of that society.)


The migration of a large body of men, women and children across the
continent to Oregon was, in the year 1843, strictly an experiment; not
only in respect to the members, but to the outfit of the migrating
party. Before that date, two or three missionaries had performed the
journey on horseback, driving a few cows with them, three or four wagons
drawn by oxen had reached Fort Hall, on Snake River, but it was the
honest opinion of the most of those who had traveled the route down
Snake River, that no large number of cattle could be subsisted on its
scanty pasturage, or wagons taken over a country so rugged and
mountainous.

The emigrants were also assured that the Sioux would be much opposed to
the passage of so large a body through their country, and would probably
resist it on account of the emigrants’ destroying and frightening away
the buffaloes, which were then diminishing in numbers.

The migrating body numbered over one thousand souls, with about one
hundred and twenty wagons, drawn by six-ox teams, averaging about six
yokes to the team, and several thousand loose horses and cattle.

The emigrants first organized and attempted to travel in one body, but
it was soon found that no progress could be made with a body so
cumbrous, and as yet so averse to all discipline. And at the crossing of
the “Big Blue” it divided into two columns, which traveled in supporting
distance of each other as far as Independence Rock on the Sweetwater.

From this point, all danger from Indians being over, the emigrants
separated into small parties better suited to the narrow mountain paths
and small pastures in their front.

Before the division on the Blue River there was some just cause for
discontent in respect to loose cattle. Some of the emigrants had only
their teams, while others had large herds in addition, which must share
the pasture and be guarded and driven by the whole body. This discontent
had its effect in the division on the Blue. Those not encumbered with or
having but few loose cattle attached themselves to the light column;
those having more than four or five cows had of necessity to join the
heavy or cow column. Hence the cow column, being much larger than the
other and much encumbered with its large herds, had to use greater
exertion and observe a more rigid discipline to keep pace with the more
agile consort. It is with the cow column that I propose to journey with
the reader for a single day.

It is four o’clock A. M.; the sentinels on duty have discharged their
rifles—the signal that the hours of sleep are over—and every wagon and
tent is pouring forth its night tenants, and slow-kindling smokes begin
largely to rise and float away in the morning air. Sixty men start from
the corral, spreading as they make through the vast herd of cattle and
horses that make a semicircle around the encampment, the most distant
perhaps two miles away.

[Illustration:

  17.—“Oregon Buttes,”—taken from South Pass.
]

The herders pass to the extreme verge and carefully examine for trails
beyond, to see that none of the animals have strayed or been stolen
during the night. This morning no trails led beyond the outside animals
in sight, and by 5 o’clock the herders begin to contract the great,
moving circle, and the well-trained animals move slowly towards camp,
clipping here and there a thistle or a tempting bunch of grass on the
way. In about an hour five thousand animals are close up to the
encampment, and the teamsters are busy selecting their teams and driving
them inside the corral to be yoked. The corral is a circle one hundred
yards deep, formed with wagons connected strongly with each other; the
wagon in the rear being connected with the wagon in front by its tongue
and ox chains. It is a strong barrier that the most vicious ox cannot
break, and in case of an attack of the Sioux would be no contemptible
intrenchment.

From 6 to 7 o’clock is a busy time; breakfast is to be eaten, the tents
struck, the wagons loaded and the teams yoked and brought up in
readiness to be attached to their respective wagons. All know when, at 7
o’clock, the signal to march sounds, that those not ready to take their
proper places in the line of march must fall into the dusty rear for the
day.

There are sixty wagons. They have been divided into fifteen divisions or
platoons of four wagons each, and each platoon is entitled to lead in
its turn. The leading platoon today will be the rear one tomorrow, and
will bring up the rear unless some teamster, through indolence or
negligence, has lost his place in the line, and is condemned to that
uncomfortable post. It is within ten minutes of seven; the corral but
now a strong barricade is everywhere broken, the teams being attached to
the wagons. The women and children have taken their places in them. The
pilot (a borderer who has passed his life on the verge of civilization
and has been chosen to the post of leader from his knowledge of the
savage and his experience in travel through roadless wastes), stands
ready, in the midst of his pioneers and aids, to mount and lead the way.
Ten or fifteen young men, not today on duty, form another cluster. They
are ready to start on a buffalo hunt, are well mounted and well armed,
as they need be, for the unfriendly Sioux have driven the buffalo out of
the Platte, and the hunters must ride fifteen or twenty miles to reach
them. The cow drivers are hastening, as they get ready, to the rear of
their charge, to collect and prepare them for the day’s march.

It is on the stroke of seven; the rush to and fro, the cracking of
whips, the loud command to oxen, and what seemed to be the inextricable
confusion of the last ten minutes has ceased. Fortunately every one has
been found and every teamster is at his post. The clear notes of a
trumpet sound in the front; the pilot and his guards mount their horses;
the leading divisions of the wagons move out of the encampment, and take
up the line of march; the rest fall into their places with the precision
of clock work, until the spot so lately full of life sinks back into
that solitude that seems to reign over the broad plain and rushing river
as the caravan draws its lazy length towards the distant El Dorado. It
is with the hunters we shall briskly canter towards the bold but smooth
and grassy bluffs that bound the broad valley, for we are not yet in
sight of the grander but less beautiful scenery (of Chimney Rock, Court
House and other bluffs, so nearly resembling giant castles and palaces),
made by the passage of the Platte through the highlands near Laramie. We
have been traveling briskly for more than an hour. We have reached the
top of the bluff, and now have turned to view the wonderful panorama
spread before us. To those who have not been on the Platte, my powers of
description are wholly inadequate to convey an idea of the vast extent
and grandeur of the picture, and the rare beauty and distinctness of the
detail. No haze or fog obscures objects in the pure and transparent
atmosphere of this lofty region. To those accustomed only to the murky
air of the seaboard, no correct judgment of distance can be formed by
sight, and objects which they think they can reach in a two hours’ walk
may be a day’s travel away; and though the evening air is a better
conductor of sound, on the high plain during the day the report of the
loudest rifle sounds little louder than the bursting of a cap; and while
the report can be heard but a few hundred yards, the smoke of the
discharge may be seen for miles. So extended is the view from the bluff
on which the hunters stand, that the broad river glowing under the
morning sun like a sheet of silver, and the broader emerald valley that
borders it, stretch away in the distance until they narrow at almost two
points in the horizon, and when first seen, the vast pile of the Wind
River Mountains though hundreds of miles away, looks clear and distinct
as a white cottage on the plain.

[Illustration:

  18.—“STEAMBOAT SPRING” ON THE BANKS OF THE BEAR RIVER.
]

We are full six miles away from the line of march; though everything is
dwarfed by distance, it is seen distinctly. The caravan has been about
two hours in motion and is now as widely extended as a prudent regard
for safety will permit. First, near the bank of the shining river is a
company of horsemen; they seem to have found an obstruction, for the
main body has halted while three or four ride rapidly along the bank of
the creek or slough. They are hunting a favorable crossing for the
wagons; while we look they have succeeded; it has apparently required no
work to make it passable, for all but one of the party have passed on,
and he has raised a flag, no doubt a signal to the wagons to steer their
course to where he stands. The leading teamster sees him, though he is
yet two miles off, and steers his course directly towards him, all the
wagons following in his track. They (the wagons) form a line
three-quarters of a mile in length; some of the teamsters ride upon the
front of their wagons, some march beside their teams; scattered along
the line companies of women are taking exercise on foot; they gather
bouquets of rare and beautiful flowers that line the way; near them
stalks a stately greyhound, or an Irish wolf dog, apparently proud of
keeping watch and ward over his master’s wife and children. Next comes a
band of horses; two or three men or boys follow them, the docile and
sagacious animals scarce needing this attention, for they have learned
to follow in the rear of the wagons, and know that at noon they will be
allowed to graze and rest. Their knowledge of time seems as accurate as
of the place they are to occupy in the line, and even a full-blown
thistle will scarce tempt them to straggle or halt until the dinner hour
has arrived. Not so with the large herd of horned beasts that bring up
the rear; lazy, selfish and unsocial, it has been a task to get them in
motion, the strong always ready to domineer over the weak, halt in the
front and forbid the weak to pass them. They seem to move only in the
fear of the driver’s whip; though in the morning, full to repletion,
they have not been driven an hour before their hunger and thirst seem to
indicate a fast of days’ duration. Through all the long day their greed
is never satisfied, nor their thirst quenched, nor is there a moment of
relaxation of the tedious and vexatious labors of their drivers,
although to all others the march furnishes some season of relaxation or
enjoyment. For the cow drivers there is none.

But from the standpoint of the hunters, the vexations are not apparent;
the crack of whips and loud objurgation are lost in the distance.
Nothing of the moving panorama, smooth and orderly as it appears, has
more attractions for the eye than that vast square column in which all
colors are mingled, moving here slowly and there briskly, as impelled by
horsemen riding furiously in front and rear.

[Illustration:

  19.—“AMERICAN FALLS.”

  Railroad bridge of the “Oregon Short Line.”
]

But the picture in its grandeur, its wonderful mingling of colors and
distinctness of detail, is forgotten in contemplation of the singular
people who give it life and animation. No other race of men with the
means at their command would undertake so great a journey, none save
these could successfully perform it, with no previous preparation,
relying only on the fertility of their own invention to devise the means
to overcome each danger and difficulty as it arose. They have undertaken
to perform with slow-moving oxen a journey of two thousand miles. The
way lies over trackless wastes, wide and deep rivers, ragged and lofty
mountains, and is beset with hostile savages. Yet, whether it were a
deep river with no tree upon its banks, a rugged defile where even a
loose horse could not pass, a hill too steep for him to climb, or a
threatened attack of an enemy, they are always found ready and equal to
the occasion, and always conquerors. May we not call them men of
destiny? They are people changed in no essential particulars from their
ancestors, who have followed closely on the footsteps of the receding
savage, from the Atlantic seaboard to the great Valley of the
Mississippi.

But while we have been gazing at the picture in the valley, the hunters
have been examining the high plain in the other direction. Some dark
moving objects have been discovered in the distance, and all are closely
watching them to discover what they are, for in the atmosphere of the
plains a flock of crows marching miles away, or a band of buffaloes or
Indians at ten times the distance look alike, and many ludicrous
mistakes occur. But these are buffaloes, for two have struck their heads
together and are, alternately, pushing each other back. The hunters
mount and away in pursuit, and I, a poor cow-driver, must hurry back to
my daily toil, and take a scolding from my fellow herders for so long
playing truant.

The pilot, by measuring the ground and timing the speed of the wagons
and the walk of his horses, has determined the rate of each, so as to
enable him to select the nooning place, as nearly as the requisite grass
and water can be had at the end of five hours’ travel of the wagons.
Today, the ground being favorable, little time has been lost in
preparing the road, so that he and his pioneers are at the nooning place
an hour in advance of the wagons, which time is spent in preparing
convenient watering places for the animals, and digging little wells
near the bank of the Platte, as the teams are not unyoked, but simply
turned loose from the wagons, a corral is not formed at noon, but the
wagons are drawn up in columns, four abreast, the leading wagon of each
platoon on the left, the platoons being formed with that in view. This
brings friends together at noon as well as at night.

[Illustration:

  20.—Near summit of Blue Mountains—Meacham Station of O. R. & N. R. R.
    on the Trail, and site of “Lee Encampment.”
]

Today an extra session of the council is being held, to settle a dispute
that does not admit of delay, between a proprietor and a young man who
has undertaken to do a man’s service on the journey for bed and board.
Many such engagements exist, and much interest is taken in the manner in
which this high court, from which there is no appeal, will define the
rights of each party in such engagements. The council was a high court
in the most exalted sense. It was a senate composed of the ablest and
most respected fathers of the emigration. It exercised both legislative
and judicial powers, and its laws and decisions proved it equal and
worthy of the high trust reposed in it. Its sessions were usually held
on days when the caravan was not moving. It first took the state of the
little commonwealth into consideration; revised or repealed rules
defective or obsolete, and enacted such others as the exigencies seemed
to require. The common weal being cared for, it next resolved itself
into a court to hear and settle private disputes and grievances. The
offender and the aggrieved appeared before it; witnesses were examined,
and the parties were heard by themselves and sometimes by counsel. The
judges being thus made fully acquainted with the case, and being in no
way influenced or cramped by technicalities, decided all cases according
to their merits. There was but little use for lawyers before this court,
for no plea was entertained which was calculated to hinder or defeat the
ends of justice. Many of these judges have since won honors in higher
spheres. They have aided to establish on the broad basis of right and
universal liberty two pillars of our great Republic in the Occident.
Some of the young men who appeared before them as advocates have
themselves sat upon the highest judicial tribunals, commanded armies,
been governors of states and taken high position in the senate of the
nation.

It is now one o’clock; the bugle has sounded and the caravan has resumed
its westward journey. It is in the same order, but the evening is far
less animated than the morning march; a drowsiness has fallen apparently
on man and beast; teamsters drop asleep on their perches and even when
walking by their teams, and the words of command are now addressed to
the slowly creeping oxen in the soft tenor of women or the piping treble
of children, while the snores of the teamsters make a droning
accompaniment. But a little incident breaks the monotony of the march.
An emigrant’s wife, whose state of health has caused Doctor Whitman to
travel near the wagon for the day, is now taken with violent illness.
The Doctor has had the wagon driven out of the line, a tent pitched and
a fire kindled. Many conjectures are hazarded in regard to this
mysterious proceeding, and as to why this lone wagon is to be left
behind. And we too must leave it, hasten to the front and note the
proceedings, for the sun is now getting low in the west and at length
the painstaking pilot is standing ready to conduct the train in the
circle which he has previously measured and marked out, which is to form
the invariable fortification for the night. The leading wagons follow
him so nearly around the circle that but a wagon length separates them.
Each wagon follows in its track, the rear closing on the front, until
its tongue and ox chains will perfectly reach from one to the other, and
so accurate the measure and perfect the practice, that the hindmost
wagon of the train always precisely closes the gateway, as each wagon is
brought into position. It is dropped from its team (the teams being
inside the circle), the team unyoked and the yokes and chains are used
to connect the wagon strongly with that in its front. Within ten minutes
from the time the leading wagon halted, the barricade is formed, the
teams unyoked and driven out to pasture. Every one is busy preparing
fires of buffalo chips to cook the evening meal, pitching tents and
otherwise preparing for the night. There are anxious watchers for the
absent wagon, for there are many matrons who may be afflicted like its
inmate before the journey is over; and they fear the strange and
startling practice of this Oregon doctor will be dangerous. But as the
sun goes down the absent wagon rolls into camp, the bright, speaking
face and cheery look of the doctor, who rides in advance, declare
without words that all is well, and both mother and child are
comfortable. I would fain now and here pay a passing tribute to that
noble and devoted man, Doctor Whitman. I will obtrude no other name upon
the reader, nor would I his were he of our party or even living, but his
stay with us was transient, though the good he did was permanent, and he
has long since died at his post.

[Illustration:

  21.—Falls of the Willamette—the objective point of the pioneers.
]

From the time he joined us on the Platte until he left us at Fort Hall,
his great experience and indomitable energy were of priceless value to
the migrating column. His constant advice, which we knew was based upon
a knowledge of the road before us, was, “Travel, _travel_, TRAVEL;
nothing else will take you to the end of your journey; nothing is wise
that does not help you along; nothing is good for you that causes a
moment’s delay.” His great authority as a physician and complete success
in the case above referred to, saved us many prolonged and perhaps
ruinous delays from similar causes, and it is no disparagement to others
to say that to no other individual are the emigrants of 1843 so much
indebted for the successful conclusion of their journey as to Dr. Marcus
Whitman.

All able to bear arms in the party have been formed into three
companies, and each of these into four watches; every third night it is
the duty of one of these companies to keep watch and ward over the camp,
and it is so arranged that each watch takes its turn of guard duty
through the different watches of the night. Those forming the first
watch tonight will be second on duty, then third and fourth, which
brings them through all the watches of the night. They begin at 8
o’clock P. M., and end at 4 o’clock A. M.

It is not yet 8 o’clock when the first watch is to be set; the evening
meal is just over, and the corral now free from the intrusion of cattle
or horses, groups of children are scattered over it. The larger are
taking a game of romps; “the wee toddling things” are being taught that
great achievement that distinguishes man from the lower animals. Before
a tent near the river a violin makes lively music, and some youths and
maidens have improvised a dance upon the green; in another quarter a
flute gives its mellow and melancholy notes to the still night air,
which, as they float away over the quiet river, seem a lament for the
past rather than a hope for the future. It has been a prosperous day;
more than twenty miles have been accomplished of the great journey. The
encampment is a good one; one of the causes that threatened much future
delay has just been removed by the skill and energy of that “good angel”
of the emigrants, Doctor Whitman, and it has lifted a load from the
hearts of the elders. Many of these are assembled around the good doctor
at the tent of the pilot (which is his home for the time being), and are
giving grave attention to his wise and energetic counsel. The care-worn
pilot sits aloof, quietly smoking his pipe, for he knows the brave
doctor is “strengthening his hands.”

[Illustration:

  22.—The Union Pacific Building, Omaha,—site of one of the “jumping
    off” points for Oregon.
]

But time passes; the watch is set for the night; the council of old men
has been broken up, and each has returned to his own quarter; the flute
has whispered its last lament to the deepening night; the violin is
silent, and the dancers have dispersed; enamored youth have whispered a
tender “good night” in the ear of blushing maidens, or stolen a kiss
from the lips of some future bride—for Cupid here, as elsewhere, has
been busy bringing together congenial hearts, and among these simple
people he alone is consulted in forming the marriage tie. Even the
doctor and the pilot have finished their confidential interview and have
separated for the night. All is hushed and repose from the fatigues of
the day, save the vigilant guard and the wakeful leader, who still has
cares upon his mind that forbid sleep. He hears the 10 o’clock relief
taking post and the “all well” report of the returned guard; the night
deepens, yet he seeks not the needed repose. At length a sentinel
hurries to him with the welcome report that a party is approaching—as
yet too far away for its character to be determined, and he instantly
hurries out in the direction in which it was seen. This he does both
from inclination and duty, for in times past the camp had been
unnecessarily alarmed by timid or inexperienced sentinels, causing much
confusion and fright amongst women and children, and it had been a rule
that all extraordinary incidents of the night should be reported
directly to the pilot, who alone had the authority to call out the
military strength of the column, or of so much of it as was in his
judgment necessary to prevent a stampede or repel an enemy. Tonight he
is at no loss to determine that the approaching party are our missing
hunters, and that they have met with success, and he only waits until by
some further signal he can know that no ill has happened to them. This
is not long wanting. He does not even await their arrival, but the last
care of the day being removed, and the last duty performed, he too seeks
the rest that will enable him to go through the same routine tomorrow.
But here I leave him, for my task is also done, and unlike his, it is to
be repeated no more.


NOTE—A CORRECTION—Col. George B. Currey was the author of “The Tribute
to the Ox Whip,” not Col. George L. Curry, as printed in this number.




             COL. GEORGE L. CURRY’S TRIBUTE TO THE OX WHIP.

    (Reprinted from Transactions of the Oregon Pioneer Association.)


My task is to call from dust and dark forgetfulness that advance banner
of Americanism and progress—the ox whip. Its crack was the command
“Forward to the nation.” Its sharp, keen accent proclaimed that
obstacles to prayers must be overcome. It waved aloft on the prairies of
the “Old West,” and pointing to the new, a vast throng took up the
westward march, which, keeping step to the music of destiny, dashed
across the broad Missouri, rolled a living tide up the grassy slope of
the Platte, scaled the imperial heights of the Rocky Mountains, and with
“the tread of a giant and shout of a conquerer” defied the heat, dust,
thirst and hunger, the desert heart of the continent, leaped the Blue
Mountains, paused but quailed not on the banks of the deep, wide
Columbia, where again the potential crack is heard and the mighty,
“rock-ribbed” walls of the Cascades are stormed, and as the line rolls
bravely over the giddy summit the exultant driver gives a grand
triumphant crack into the stolid face of grand old Hood, the storm-clad
sentinel of the mountain fastness. The people have reached their goal.
The spell is broken. The errand has lost its magic, its mission has been
accomplished. A state, with freedom’s diadem effulgent on its brow
salutes the eye, and dipping its young hand in the Pacific completes the
baptism of human liberty and proclaims an “ocean-bound republic.” All
hail and honor to the ox whip, the symbol of the grand, achieving force
of its age.

[Illustration:

  23.—Street, Oregon City,—about where the pioneers broke ranks.
]




                    THE CAMP FIRES OF THE PIONEERS.


                         _VINCERE EST VIVERE!_

                           By SAM L. SIMPSON.

         [Reprinted from Transactions of Pioneer Association.]

          Striking at ease his epic lyre,
              The laureled Mantuan has sung
          Beleagured Troy’s illustrious pyre—
              The daring sail Æneas flung
          To wayward gales, the voyage long
          That tracks the silver wave of song;
          Until the worn and weary oar
          Has kissed the far Lavinian shore;
          The Argo’s classic pennon streams
          Along sweet horizons of dreams,—
              The Mayflower has furled her wings,
              And restfully at anchor swings—
          Columbia chants to columned seas
          The triumph of the Genoese,
          And yet, stout hearts, no fitting meed
          Of panegyric crowns your deed
              From which a stately empire springs.

          The minions of a perfumed age
          Already crowd upon the stage,—
          The massive manhood of the past
          In many a graceful mould is cast;
          And yet with calm and kindly eyes
              You view the feast for others spread,
          And hail the blue benignant skies
              Resigned and grandly comforted.
          It was for this you broke the way
          Before the sunset gates of day—
              For this, with godlike faith endued,
          You scaled the misty crags of fate,
              And, with resounding labors, hewed
          The Doric pillars of the state.

          There is no task for you to do—
              Your tents are furled, the bugle blown—
          But yet another day, and you
              Will live in clustered fame alone.
          The fir will chant a song of rue,
              The pine will drop a wreath, may be,
          And o’er the dim Cascades the stars
          Will nightly roll the gleaming cars
              You followed well from sea to sea.
                  Before your scarred battalion’s wheel
              Into the mystic realm of shade,
                  And on your grizzled brows the seal
              Of mystery is softly laid,
          Once more around your old campfires,
          That smoulder like fulfilled desires,
          Rehearse the story of your toils
          Display the hero crowned with spoils—
                  The glimmer of triumphant steel,
              Beneath the garland and the braid.

          O, further than the legions bore
              The eagles of Imperial Rome—
                  Three thousand miles, a weary march,
                  You followed Hesper’s golden torch,
          Until it stooped on this green shore,
              And lit the rosy fires of home.
          It was a solemn morn you turned
          And quenched the sacred flames that burned
              On hearths endeared for years and years;
                  It seemed your very souls grew dark
                  With those sweet fires—the latest spark
              Was drowned in bitter, bitter tears.
          A softer, sweeter sunlight wrapt
              The forms of all familiar things,
          And as each cord of feeling snapt
              Another angel furled its wings:
          The lights and shadows in the lane,
              The oak beside the foot-worn stile
              Whose wheeling shades a weary while
          Had told the hours of joy and pain—
              The vine that clambered o’er the door
              And many a purple cluster bore—
          The vestal flowers of household love—
              The sloping roof that wore the stain
              Of summer sun and winter rain,
          And smoky chimney tops above—
          The beauty of the orchard trees,
          Bedecked with blossoms, glad with bees—
          The brook that all the livelong day
          Had many things to sing and say—
          All these upon your vision dwell
          And weave the sorrow of farewell.

          And now the last good-bye is said—
          Good-bye! the living and the dead
          In those sad words together speak,
          And all your chosen ways are bleak!
              Forward! The cracking lashes send
          A thrill of action down the train,—
              Their brawny necks the oxen bend
          With creaking yoke and clanking chain;
              The horsemen gallop down the line,
              And swerve around the lowing kine
          That straggle loosely on the plain—
              And lift glad hands to babes that laugh
              And dash the buttercups like chaff.
          Hurrah! the skies are jewel blue—
              In tasseled green and braided gold
              The robes of April are enrolled,

          And hopes are high and hearts are true!
          Hurrah! hurrah! the bold, the free—
              The sudden sweep of ecstacy
          That lifts the soul on wings of fire,
          When fears consume and doubts expire,
          And life, in one red torrent, leaps
          To join the march of boundless deeps!

          And now the sun is dropping down
          And lights and shadows, red and brown
              Are weaving sunset’s purple spell:
          The teams are freed, the fires are made,
          Like scarlet night flow’rs in the shade,
          And pleasant groups before, between,
          Are thronging in the fitful sheen—
              The day is done, and “all is well.”

          So pass the days, so fall the nights;
          A banquet of renewed delights;
              The old horizons lift and pass
                  In magic changes like a dream,
              And in the heavens’ azure glass
                  Tomorrow’s jasper arches gleam—
              With many a vale and mountain mass,
                  And many a singing, shining stream.
          The post is dead and daisied now—
          In shadow fades from heart and brow—
          The air is incense, and the breeze
          Is sweet with siren melodies,
          And all the castled hills before
          In blooming vistas sweep and soar
          Like silver lace, the clouds are strewn
          Along the distant, dreamy zone;
          It is a happy, happy time,
          As wayward as a poet’s rhyme,
              And ever as the sun goes down
                  The west is shut with rosy bars,
              And Night puts on her golden crown
                  And fills the vases of the stars.

                 ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

          A hundred nights, a hundred days,
          Nor folded cloud nor silken haze
          Mellow the sun’s midsummer blaze.
          Along a brown and barren plain
          In silence drags the wasted train;
          The dust starts up beneath your tread,
          Like angry ashes of the dead,
          To blind you with a choking cloud
          And wrap you in a yellow shroud.
              There are no birds to sing your joy,
                  You have no joy for birds to sing,—
              A hundred fangs your hearts destroy—
                  A thousand troubles fret and sting.
          The desert mocks you all the while
          With that dry shimmer of a smile
              That dazzles on a bleaching skull,—

          The bloom is withered on your cheek
          You slowly move and lowly speak,
              And every eye is dim and dull.
          Alas, it is a lonesome land
          Of bitter sage and barren sand
              Under a bitter, barren sky
          That never heard the robin sing,
          Nor kissed the larks’s exultant wing,
              Nor breathed a rose’s fragrant sigh!
          A weary land—alas! alas!
          The shadows of the vultures pass—
              A spectral sign across your path;
          The gaunt, gray wolf, with head askance
          Throws back at you a scowlling glance
              Of cringing hate and coward wrath.
          And like a wraith accursed and banned
          Fades out before your lifted hand;
          A dim, sad land, forgot, forsworn
          By all bright life that may not mourn—
          Acrazed with glist’ning ghosts of seas
          In broideries of flower and trees,
          And rivers, blue and cool, that seem
          To ripple as in fevered dream—
          Only to taunt the thirst, and fly
          From withered lips and lurid eye.

          A hundred days, a hundred nights—
              The goal is farther than before,
          And all the changing shades and lights
              Are wrought in fancy’s woof no more.
          The sun is weary overhead,
          And pallid deserts round you spread
              A sorrowful eternity;
          And if some grisly mountain here
          Confront your march with forms of fear,
              You turn aside and pass them by.
          And all are overworn—the flesh
          Is now a frayed and faded mesh
              That will not mask the inward flame;
          There is no longer any care
          To round the speech, or speak men fair,
              Or any gentle sense of shame;
          The hearts of all are shifted through—
              The grain drops through the windy husks
          And false lights flick’ring round the true
              Are quenched at last in dews and dusk.
          And some are silent, some are loud
          And rage like beasts among the crowd,—
          And some are mild, and some are sharp
          In word and deed, and snarl and carp,
              And fret the camp with petty broils;
          And some of temper, sweet and bland,
          Do seem to bear a magic wand
              That wins the secret of their toils—
          Rare souls that waste like sandal-wood
          In many a fragrant deed and mood;
          And some invoke the wrath of God,

          Or feign to kiss the burning rod,—
          And some, may be, with better prayers,
          Stand up in all their griefs and cares
          And clinch their teeth, and do and die
          Without a whine, a curse or cry.
          And so the dust and grit and stain
          Of travel wears into the grain;
          And so the hearts and souls of men
          Were darkly tried and tested then
          That, in the happy after years,
          When rainbows gild remembered tears,
          Should any friend inquire of you
          If such or such an one you knew—
          I hear the answer, terse and grim,
          “Ah, yes; I crossed the plains with him!”

          And, lo! a moaning phantom stands,
          To greet you in the lonely lands,
              Among all lesser shadows, dight
          With spoils of death; his meager hands
          Salute you as you pass, and claim
              The sacrifice that feeds his flame.
          The march has broken into flight,
          And wreck and ruin strew the road
          The flaming phantom has bestrode;
              The ox lies gasping in his yoke
                  Beside the wagon that he drew—
          Where the forsaken campfires smoke
                  To hopeless skies of tawny blue;
          And here are straight, still mounds that mark
          The flight of life’s delusive spark—
          The somber points of pause that lie
          So thick in human destiny.
              And oh, so dark on this bleak page
              Of drifting sand and dreary sage!
                  The sultry levels of the day,
              The night with weird enchantment fills,
                  And frowning forests stretch away
              Along the slopes of shadow hills;
          And in the solemn stillness breaks
              The wild-wolf music of the plain,
          As if a deeper sorrow wakes
              The dreary dead in that refrain
                  That swells and gathers like a wail
                  Of woe from Pluto’s ebon pale,
              And sinks in pulseless calm again.

          A change at last!—an opal mist
              Along the faint horizon’s rim
          Is banked against the amethyst
              Of summer sky—so far, so dim,
          You shade your eyes, and gaze and gaze,
              Until there wavers into sight
              A swinging, swaying strand of white,
              And then the sapphire walls and towns
              That breaks the light in quiv’ring showers
          And float and fade in diamond haze;—
              It is the mountains!—grand and calm
                  As God upon his awful throne;
              They build you strength and breathe you balm,
                  For all their templed might of stone
              Is our eternal sculptured psalm!
          And now your western course is led
          Where grassy pampas spread and spread
              The pastures of the buffalo;
                  And like the sudden lash of foam
                  When tropic tempest smite the sea
              And masts are stript to ward the blow—
          A ragged whirl of dust described
          Upon the prairie’s sloping side
                  Portends a storm as swift and free,—
                  And lo, the herds—they come! they come!
          A sweeping thunder cloud of life
              Loud as Niagara, and grand
              As they who rode with plume and brand
          On Waterloo’s red slope of strife;
          Wild as the rush of tidal waves,
          That roar among the crags and caves,
              The trampling besom hurls along—
          A black and bounding, fiery mass
          That withers, as with flame, the grass—
              O! terrible—ten thousand strong!
          Meanwhile, the dusty teams are stopt,
          The wagon tongues are deftly dropt,
          And drivers by their oxen stand
          And soothe them with soft speech and hand.
              And yet, with horns tossed free, and eyes
                  Ablaze with purple depths of ire,
                  A thousand servile years expire
            And flashes of old nature rise,
          As if a sudden spirit woke
          That would not brook the chain and yoke,—
          And then, the stormy pageant past,
          They bow their callous necks at last,
          And with a heavy stride and slow,
          The dreams of liberty forego.

          Alas! it is a land of shades.
              And mystic visions, swift alarms;
          The fretted spirit flames and fades
              With clanging calls to prayers or arms.
          * * * The day is dying, and the sun
          Hangs like a jewel rich with fire
          In the deep west of your desire.
          And o’er the wide plateau is rolled
          A surge of crinkled sunset gold,
              Bordered with shadows gray and dun.
          A horseman with loose, waving hair,
          Black as the blackest of despair,
              Wheels into sight and gives you heed,
              And on its haunches reins his steed,
              All quivering like a river reed,
          And sits him like a statue there,—
          Transfigured in the sunset sea—
          A bronze, bare sphynx of mystery!
          A moment thus, in wonder lost,
          His eagle plumes all backward tossed,
          Then wheels again, as swift as wind,
          The wild hair floating free behind.
          And sunset’s crinkled surges pour
          Along an empty waste once more!
          But you, since that fantastic shade
          Across your desert path has played,
          Distrust the very ground you tread,
          And shiver with a nameless dread
          Till stars drop crimson, and the sky
          Is wan with heartless treachery.

                 ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

          For many days a form of white
          Has flashed and faded in your sight
          In fleeting glimpses, as of wings,
          Our God’s bright palm in beckonings.
          It is a secret nursed of each—
          You dare not give the thought in speech,
          So wierdly solemn is the sign—
              As if, upon the western stairs,
              The angels of a thousand prayers
          Were come with sacred bread and wine.
          Again, the still, enchanted hour
          Of sunset burns in crimson flower,
          And purple-hearted shadows sleep
          Like clustered pansies, warm and deep,
              Eastward of wreathen crag and wall.
          The road that wound and wound all day
          In many a dark and devious way
          At last with one swift curve ascends
          A rolling plain that breaks and bends
              Westward, till rosy curtains fall
              O’er mountains massed and magical.
          Resplendent as a pearly tent
          Upon the fir-fringed battlement—
          Serene in sunset gold and rose,
          A pyramid of splendor glows,
          So vast and calm and bright your dream
          Is dust and ashes in its gleam.
          A maiden speaks—“He led us far—
          It is the golden western star!”
          And then a youth—“Our goal is won—
          ’Tis the pavilion of the sun.”
          A gray sage, then, in undertone—
          “It must be Hood, so grand and lone—
          The shining citadel and throne
          Of Terminus, that Roman god
          Who marked the line that legions trod,
          And set the limits of the world
          Where Cæsar’s battle flags were furled!
          Oh, for the days of dark-eyed prophetess
          Who sang in Syrian wilderness
              The gilded chariots’ overthrow,
          To lead us for the cymbaled song
          To him, the beautiful and strong,
              Who dashed the brimming cup of woe
          And was our cloud and flame so long!”

          Forward! the crested mountains kneel
          To patient tolls of fire and steel—
          A way is hewn and you emerge
          Upon the Cascades’ battled verge;—
              And far beneath you and away
                  To ocean’s shining fringe of foam
              And summer vail of floating spray,
          Behold the land of your emprise,
          Serene as tender twilight skies
                  When day is swooning into gloam!
          It is the morning twilight now
          That wraps the valley’s misted brow;
          The bourgeoning and blooming dawn—
          The reveille of Oregon.

          How brightly on your vision, first
          The pictured vales and woodlands burst,—
          The lakelets set like twinkling gems
          Along the prairies’ pleated hems,—
              The silver crooks and rippled sweeps
                  Of happy rivers here and there,
              And many a waterfall that leaps
                  In rainbow garlands through the air,—
              The skirted maples and the groves
              Of oak the mild home-spirit loves—
              Enameled plains and crenelled hills
              And tangled skeins of brooks and rills,—
          Imperial forests of the fir,
          All redolent of musk and myrrh,
          That fling and furl their banners old,
          And still their gloomy secret hold
              As Time his cloudy censer fills.

                 ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

          Where the foothills are wedded to the meadow
              In the dimples that dally and pass
          And the oak swings an indolent shadow
              On the daisies that dial the grass.—
          In the crescents of rivers; in hollows
              Red-lipped in the strawberry time,
          And the slope where the forests half follows,
              A brooklet’s melodious rhyme,—
          On the sun-rippled knolls, and the prairies,
              Beloved of the wandering kine—
          In the skirts of the woodland the fairies
              Embroidered with rose and with vine—
          There’s a tent, and a smoke that is curling
              Above in the beautiful dome,
          Like a guardian spirit unfurling
              Soft wings o’er the temple of home.
          And the ax of the woodman is ringing
              All day in sylvestrian halls,
          Where the chipmunk is playfully springing
              And the blue-jay discordantly calls;
          And the red chips are fitfully flying
              On the asters that sprinkle the moss;
          Where the beauty of summer is dying,
              And the sun lances glimmer across;
          There’s a bird that is spectrally knocking,
              On a pine that is withered and bare,
          For the fir-top is trembling and rocking,
              In the blue of the clear upper air—
          There’s a crackling of fiber—the crashing
              Of a century crushed at a blow,
          And the fir-trees are wringing and lashing
              Their hands in a frenzy of woe!

          A pheasant whirs up from the thicket
              In the hush that comes after the fall,
          And the squirrel retires to his wicket,
              And the bluebird renounces his call;
          And the panther lies crouched by the bowlder
              In the gloom of the canyon anear,
          And the brown bear looks over his shoulder,
              And the buck blows a signal of fear;
          But there’s never a pause in your duty,
              And the echoing ax is not still
          As you waste with the green temples of beauty
              For the puncheon and rafter and sill
          That are wrought in a cabin so lowly
              The trees will clasp hands over head,
          But the heart calls it home, and the holy
              Love-lights on its hearthstone are shed.

          It is staunch and rough-hewn, and the ceiling
              Of the fragrant red cedar is made,
          With an edging of silver revealing
              A picture of sunlight and shade.
          And the Word has its place, not a trifle
              Obscured in a pageant of books,
          And above the broad mantle your rifle
              Is hung on accessible hooks.
          Oh, the freshness of hope and of fancy
              That illumines the home and the heart,
          With the grace of a bright necromancy
              That excels the adorning of art!
          And you rise and look forth and the glory
              Of Hood is before you again,
          And the sun weaves a gold-threaded story
              In the purple of mountain and glen.

                 ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

          Stand up, and look out from the mansion
              That adorns the old scene of the past
          On the fruitage of hope—the expansion
              Of the fruits of your vigils forecast!
          While the shadows of Hood have been wheeling
              Away from the face of the sun,
          What a glamour of change has been stealing
              On the fields that you painfully won!
          Like the castles that fade at cock-crowing
              The enchantments arise and advance
          Where the cities of commerce are glowing
              Like pearls in the braids of romance;
          For a state, in the shimmering armor
              Of the Pallas Athena has come,
          And her ægis is fringed with the warmer
              Refulgence that circles our home.

          As for you, you are gray, and the thunder
              Of the battle has smitten each brow
          Where the freshness of youth was turned under
              By Time’s immemorial plow;
          But the pictures of memory linger,
              Like the shadows that turn to the East,
          And will point with a tremulous finger
              To the things that are perished and ceased;
          For the trail and the foot-log have vanished,
              The canoe is a song and a tale,
          And flickering church spire has banished
              The uncanny red man from the vale;
          The cayuse is no longer in fashion—
              He is gone—with a flutter of heels,
          And the old wars are dead, and their passions
              In the crystal of culture congeals;
          And the wavering flare of the pitch light
              That illumines your banquets no more,
          Will return like a wandering witch-light
              And uncrimson the fancies of yore—
          When you dance the “Old Arkansaw” gaily
              In brogans that had followed the bear,
          And quaffed the delight of Castaly
              From the fiddle that wailed like despair;
          And so lightly you wrought with the hammer,
              And so truly with ax and with plow—
          And you blazed your own trails through the grammar,
              As the record must fairly allow;
          But you builded a state in whose arches
              Shall be carven the deed and the name,
          And posterity lengthens its marches
              In the golden starlight of your fame!




                        PILGRIMS OF THE PLAINS.

                           By JOAQUIN MILLER.


       A tale half told and hardly understood;
       The talk of bearded men that chanced to meet,
       That lean’d on long quaint rifles in the wood,
       That look’d in fellow faces, spoke discreet
       And low, as half in doubt and in defeat
       Of hope; a tale it was of lands of gold
       That lay toward the sun. Wild wing’d and fleet
       It spread among the swift Missouri’s bold
       Unbridled men, and reach’d to where Ohio roll’d.

       Then long chain’d lines of yoked and patient steers;
       Then long white trains that pointed to the west;
       Beyond the savage west; the hopes and fears
       Of blunt, untutor’d men, who hardly guess’d
       Their course; the brave and silent women, dress’d
       In homely spun attire, the boys in bands,
       The cheery babes that laughed at all and bless’d
       The doubting hearts with laughing lifted hands—
       What exodus for far untraversed lands!

       The Plains! The shouting drivers at the wheel;
       The crash of leather whips; the crush and roll
       Of wheels; the groan of yokes and grinding steel
       And iron chain, and lo! at last the whole
       Vast line, that reached as if to touch the goal,
       Began to stretch and stream away and wind
       Toward the west, as if with one control:
       Then hope loom’d fair, and home lay far behind;
       Before, the boundless plain, and fiercest of their kind.

       At first the way lay green and fresh as seas,
       And far away as any reach of wave;
       The sunny streams went by in belt of trees;
       And here and there the tassell’d tawny brave
       Swept by on horse, looked back, stretched forth and gave
       A yell of hell, and then did wheel and rein
       Awhile and point away, dark-brow’d and grave,
       Into the far and dim and distant plain
       With signs and prophecies, and then plunged on again.

       Some hills at last began to lift and break;
       Some streams began to fail of wood and tide,
       The somber plain began betime to take
       A hue of weary brown, and wild and wide
       It stretch’d its naked breast on every side.
       A babe was heard at last to cry for bread
       Amid the deserts; cattle low’d and died,
       And dying men went by with broken tread,
       And left a long black serpent line of wreck and dead.

       Strange hunger’d birds, black-wing’d and still as death,
       And crown’d of red and hooked beaks, flew low
       And close about till we could touch their breath—
       Strange unnamed birds, that seem’d to come and go
       In circles now, and now direct and slow,
       Continual, yet never touch the earth;
       Slim foxes shied and shuttled to and fro
       At times across the dusty weary dearth
       Of life, looked back, then sank like crickets in a hearth.

       Then dust arose, a long dim line like smoke
       From out of riven earth. The wheels went groaning by,
       The thousand feet in harness, and in yoke,
       They tore the ways of ashen alkali,
       And desert winds blew sudden, swift, and dry.
       The dust! It sat upon and fill’d the train.
       It seem’d to fret and fill the very sky.
       Lo! dust upon the beasts, the tent, the plain,
       And dust, alas! on breasts that rose not up again.

       They sat in desolation and in dust
       By dried-up desert streams; the mother’s hands
       Hid all her bended face; the cattle thrust
       Their tongues and faintly called across the lands.
       The babes that knew not what the way through sands
       Could mean, did ask if it would end today.
       The panting wolves slid by, red-eyed, in bands
       To pools beyond. The men look’d far away,
       And silent deemed that all a boundless desert lay.

       They rose by night, they struggl’d on and on
       As thin and still as ghosts; then here and there
       Beside the dusty way before the dawn,
       Men silent laid them down in their despair,
       And died. But woman! Woman, frail as fair!
       May man have strength to give to you your due;
       You falter’d not nor murmur’d anywhere,
       You held your babes, held to your course, and you
       Bore on through burning hell your double burdens through.

       Men stood at last, the decimated few,
       Above a land of running streams, and they?
       They pushed aside the boughs, and peering through
       Beheld afar the cool refreshing bay;
       Then some did curse, and some bend hands to pray;
       But some looked back upon the desert wide
       And desolate with death, then all the day
       They mourned. But one, with nothing left beside
       His dog to love, crept down among the ferns and died.




                        PIONEERS OF THE PACIFIC

                           BY JOAQUIN MILLER.


                      ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

               The wild man’s yell, the groaning wheel,
               The train moved like drifting barge;
               The dust rose up like a cloud,
               Like smoke of distant battle loud! Loud
               The great whips rang like shot, and steel
               Flashed back as in some battle charge.

               They sought, yea, they did find their rest
               Along that long and lonesome way,
               Those brave men buffeting the West
               With lifted faces. Full they were
               Of great endeavor.

                      ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

                                       When
               Adown the shining iron track
               We sweep, and fields of corn flash back,
               And herds of lowing steers move by,
               I turn to other days, to men
               Who made a pathway with their dust.




                               DOCUMENT.


The following is one of a set of documents giving contemporary evidence
on a most important epoch of Oregon history. It was secured by Principal
J. R. Wilson.

          (From the New Orleans Picayune, November 21, 1848.)


            PRAIRIE AND MOUNTAIN LIFE—THE OREGON EMIGRANTS.

During our detention among the upper settlements, before starting out, a
constant source of interest to us was the gathering of people bound to
Oregon. One Sunday morning, about the usual church hour in a larger
place, five or six wagons passed through the town of Westport, and one
old man with silver hair was with the party. Women and children were
walking, fathers and brothers were driving loose cattle or managing the
heavy teams, and keen-eyed youngsters, with their chins yet smooth and
rifles on their shoulders, kept in advance of the wagons with long
strides, looking as if they were already watching around the corners of
the streets for game. There was one striking feature about the party
which leads us to name it more particularly. Though traveling on the
Sabbath and through the little town that was all quiet and resting from
business in reverence of the day, there was that in the appearance of
the people that banished at once even the remotest idea of profanation.
They were all clean, and evidently appareled in their best Sunday gear.
Their countenances were sedate, and the women wore that mild composure
of visage—so pleasantly resigned, so eloquent of a calm spirit, so ready
to kindle up into smiles—that is seen more often among churchgoers,
perhaps, than in ballroom or boudoir. Some of the women carried books,
and the prettiest girl carried hers open before her as she stepped a
little coquettishly through the dust of the road. Whether she was
reading, or trying, or pretending to read, was hard to tell, but the
action had a naive effect, and as she passed she was, no doubt, much
astonished at a strange young gentleman who audibly addressed her with,
“Nymph, in thy orisons, be all my sins remembered.”

Many other small bodies of these adventurous travelers crossed our
notice at Independence, Westport, and at encampments made in the
vicinity of these and other towns, but in their largest force we saw
them just after crossing the Kansas River about the first of June. The
Oregonians were assembled here to the number of six or eight hundred,
and when we passed their encampment they were engaged in the business of
electing officers to regulate and conduct their proceedings. It was a
curious and unaccountable spectacle to us as we approached. We saw a
large body of men wheeling and marching about the prairie, describing
evolutions neither recognizable as savage, civic or military. We soon
knew they were not Indians, and were not long in setting them down for
the emigrants, but what in the name of mystery they were about our best
guessing could not reduce to anything in the shape of a mathematical
probability.

On arriving among them, however, we found they were only going on with
their elections in a manner perhaps old enough, but very new and
quizzical to us. The candidates stood up in a row behind the
constituents, and at a given signal they wheeled about and marched off,
while the general mass broke after them “lick-a-ty-split”, each man
forming in behind his favorite so that every candidate flourished a sort
of a tail of his own, and the man with the longest tail was elected!
These proceedings were continued until a captain and a council of ten
were elected; and, indeed, if the scene can be conceived, it must appear
as a curious mingling of the whimsical with the wild. Here was a
congregation of rough, bold, and adventurous men, gathered from distant
and opposite points of the Union, just forming an acquaintance with each
other, to last, in all probability, through good or ill fortune, through
the rest of their days. Few of them expected, or thought, of ever
returning to the states again. They had with them their wives and
children, and aged, depending relatives. They were going with stout and
determined hearts to traverse a wild and desolate region, and take
possession of a far corner of their country destined to prove a new and
strong arm of a mighty nation. These men were running about the prairie,
in long strings; the leaders,—in sport and for the purpose of puzzling
the judges, doubling and winding in the drollest fashion; so that, the
all-important business of forming a government seemed very much like the
merry schoolboy game of “snapping the whip.” It was really very funny to
see the candidates for the solemn council of ten, run several hundred
yards away, to show off the length of their tails, and then cut a half
circle, so as to turn and admire their longitudinal popularity _in
extenso_ themselves. “Running for office” is certainly performed in more
literal fashion on the prairie than we see the same sort of business
performed in town. To change the order of a town election, though for
once, it might prove an edifying exhibition to see a mayor and aldermen
start from the town pump and run around the court house square, the
voters falling in behind and the rival ticket running the other way,
while a band in the middle might tune up for both parties, playing “O,
What a Long Tail Our Cat’s Got;” which we surmise some popular composer
may have arranged for such an occasion.

After passing them here, we never saw the Oregonians again. They elected
a young lawyer of some eminence as we were told, named Burnett, as their
captain, and engaged an old mountaineer, known as Captain Gant, as their
guide through the mountains to Fort Hall. Several enactments were made
and agreed to, one of which was called up to be rescinded, and something
of an excitement arose in regard to it. The law made was that no family
should drive along more than three head of loose stock for each member
composing it, and this bore hard on families that had brought with them
cattle in large numbers. The dispute resulted in a split of the large
body into two or three divisions; and so they moved on, making distinct
encampments all the way. Captain Gant was to receive $1.00 a head from
the company, numbering about a thousand souls, for his services as
guide. But a few more such expeditions following in the same trail will
soon imprint such a highway through the wilderness to Oregon that
emigrants may hereafter travel without such assistance.

We left them here about the last of May and encountered no sign of them
again until returning in September, when we struck their trail on the
Sweetwater, near the south pass of the mountains. They had followed in
our own trail as far as this point and had here turned off, our course
lying in another direction. From here, all the way to Fort Laramie, we
found the now deeply worn road strewn with indications of their recent
presence. Scaffolds for drying meat, broken utensils thrown away, chips
showing where wagons had been repaired, and remnants of children’s
shoes, frocks, etc., met our notice at every deserted encampment.

But one death seemed to have occurred among them, and this was far out
under the mountains. Here the loose riders of our moving camp gathered
one morning to examine a rude pyramid of stones by the roadside. The
stones had been planted firmly in the earth, and those on top were
substantially placed, so that the wolves, whose marks were evident about
the pile, had not been able to disinter the dead. On one stone, larger
than the rest, and with a flat side, was rudely engraved:

                              J. HEMBREE.

And we place it here as perhaps the only memento those who knew him in
the States may ever receive of him. How he died, we of course cannot
surmise, but there he sleeps among the rocks of the West as soundly as
if chiseled marble was built above his bones.

On returning to Rock Independence, a point about nine hundred miles from
the settlements, we were astonished at finding that the Oregonians had
reached and passed it only four days behind us. We had confidently
supposed them four weeks in our rear, and their rapid progress augurs
well for the success of their enterprise. On the rock we found printed:

                            “THE OREGON CO.
                                arrived
                            July 26, 1843.”

At Fort Laramie we were told that they were still well provisioned when
passing there, and could even afford to trade away flour, coffee, etc.,
for necessaries of other kinds. But it was droll to hear how the Sioux
stared at the great caravans. Some of them on seeing the great number of
wagons, and particularly white women and children, for the first time,
began to think of coming down here, having seen, as they supposed, “the
whole white village” move up the mountains.




                                 INDEX.




                             TOPICAL INDEX.

 ADAMS—
   Proposals on the Oregon Question, 220

 ASTORIA—
   Settlement of, 10
   Restitution of, to U. S., 214


 BAYLIES—
   Speeches of, on Oregon, 21

 BENTON—
   Oregon policy of, 13, 16, 50, 52


 CALHOUN—
   Opposition of, to Oregon bill, 235

 CALIFORNIA—
   Contract labor in mines of, 281

 CARVER—
   Use of word Oregon by, 112, 166

 CHAMPOEG—
   Origin of name, 88
   Early life in, 88, 89
   Early settlement near, 173
   Early manners of, 172, 176

 CHOLERA—
   Ravages of, among immigrants to Oregon, 363

 CLAY—
   On the Oregon Question, 221

 COLUMBIA RIVER—
   Discovery of, 113
   Proposed as boundary, 215


 DOUGLAS—
   Interest in Oregon Question, 40


 ENGLAND—
   Rivalry of, in Oregon Country, 6

 EDUCATION—
   Appropriation of public land for in Oregon, 148


 FLOYD—
   Oregon policy of, 13–17, 218

 FREMONT—
   Work of, in Oregon, 330


 GOVERNMENT—
   Lack of in early Oregon, 9, 10
   First exercise of, 10, 11

 GOLD—
   Effect of early discoveries of, 103

 GRAY—
   Explorations of, 113


 INDIANS—
   Customs of, 77
   Behavior toward white women, 82
   Matthieu’s recollections of, 99
   Religious customs of, 179
   Legends of the, 183
   Request of, for missionaries, 225, 346
   First estimate of, in Oregon Country, 296
   Position of women among the Oregon, 296
   Funeral customs of, 300
   Poor food supply of, 302
   Estimate and census of Oregon Indians, 314
   Language, peculiarities of, 317


 JACKSON—
   Effort of, to acquire San Francisco Bay, 228


 KELLEY, HALL J.—
   Visit to Oregon in 1834, 195
   Work in Oregon, 224
   Work of, 349


 LEE—
   Petition of, to Congress, 28, 29

 LINN—
   Oregon policy of, 26, 230, 235

 LANDS—
   Cession of state claims to western, 136

 LANE—
   Arrival in Oregon, 52

 LEDYARD—
   Plan of, for exploring Oregon, 115

 LEWIS AND CLARK—
   Plan for the expedition of, 120
   Grant of land to, 144

 LOUISIANA—
   Purchase of, by U. S., 147


 McLOUGHLIN—
   Influence of, 11, 12
   Notes on, 95, 96
   Treatment of American settlers, 105
   Domestic life of, 158
   Trouble with American immigrants, 201
   Hospital work of, 308

 MISSIONARIES—
   Early settlements of, in Oregon, 194, 196, 225

 MONEY IN EARLY OREGON, 102


 NOOTKA—
   Convention of, 125


 OREGON—
   Original extent of, 4, 111
   Primitive isolation of, 6
   Territorial admission of, 52
   Motives for statehood in, 53
   Opposition to statehood in, 54
   Constitutional Convention of, 55
   Admission of, as a state, 58
   Dangers of pioneer travel to, 61, 62
   Characters of pioneers in, 63, 64
   First use of the name, 112, 166
   Spanish claims to, 122
   Southern boundary of, fixed, 127
   Russian claims to, 128
   Northern boundary of, fixed, 127
   School lands of, 154
   Early American visitors to, 193
   Early immigration to, 198
   Dispute over northern boundary of, 215
   Discussion over occupation of, 218
   Character of early settlement in, 224
   Fifty-four deg. 40 min. boundary of, 243
   Settlement of northern boundary of, 251
   Estimate and census of Indians in, 314
   Condition of, in 1842, 327
   Fur trade in, 329, 335
   Motives for movement to, 352
   Summary of negotiations for, 349
   Difficulties of route to, 359
   Estimate of immigrations to, 370
   Character of immigrants to, 398


 PARKMAN—
   Estimate of work of, on Oregon Trail, 342

 POLK—
   Inaugural address on Oregon, 46
   Message of, 1845 on Oregon, 47
   Message of, 1847, 49

 POPULATION MOVEMENT—
   Effect on Oregon, 8

 PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT—
   Notices for, 32, 33
   First steps toward, 33
   Objections to, 34, 35
   Plan of, 36
   Changes in, 37, 38
   Effectiveness of, 39
   Indian attitude toward, 40
   Lane’s verdict on, 52
   Notes on organization of, 91


 SAUVIE’S ISLAND—
   Indian population of, 310

 SLACUM—
   Visit of, to Oregon Country, 228

 SLAVERY—
   Influence of, on admission of Oregon Territory, 48, 50, 51, 147
   In Constitutional Convention, 56
   In early Oregon, 101

 SOVEREIGNTY—
   Occupation the test of, 123


 TEXAS—
   Influence of, on Oregon Question, 288

 TYLER—
   Message of, 1842 on Oregon, 41, 234
   Message of, 1843, 44
   Message of, 1844, 45


 WASHINGTON—
   Territorial formation of, 53

 WEBSTER—
   Opinion of, on Oregon Question, 239

 WHITE—
   Appointment of, as sub-Indian agent, 31
   Settlement of, in Oregon, 241

 WHITMAN—
   Character and aims of, 41, 42
   Work of, 42, 241
   Character of, 61
   Matthieu’s estimate of, 85
   Views of, on Oregon’s needs, 351
   Influence of, 381

 WILKES—
   Work of, in Oregon, 333

 WYETH—
   Visits of, to Oregon, 194
   Settlement in Oregon, 223




                              PUBLICATIONS
                                 OF THE
                       OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY


                    SOURCES OF THE HISTORY OF OREGON

                                VOLUME I

NUMBER 1.—JOURNAL OF MEDOREM CRAWFORD—AN ACCOUNT OF HIS TRIP ACROSS THE
PLAINS IN 1842. PRICE, 25 CENTS.

NUMBER 2.—THE INDIAN COUNCIL AT WALLA WALLA, MAY AND JUNE, 1855, BY COL.
LAWRENCE KIP—A JOURNAL. PRICE, 25 CENTS.

NUMBERS 3 TO 6 INCLUSIVE.—THE CORRESPONDENCE AND JOURNALS OF CAPTAIN
NATHANIEL J. WYETH, 1831–6.—A RECORD OF TWO EXPEDITIONS, FOR THE
OCCUPATION OF THE OREGON COUNTRY, WITH MAPS, INTRODUCTION AND INDEX.
PRICE, $1.10.

THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY FOR 1898–9, INCLUDING
PAPER BY SILAS B. SMITH, ON “BEGINNINGS IN OREGON,” 97 PAGES. PRICE, 25
CENTS.

THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY FOR 1899–1900.
INCLUDING TWO HISTORICAL PAPERS, 120 PAGES. PRICE, 25 CENTS.


              QUARTERLY OF THE OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

                       NO. 2, VOL. I, JUNE, 1900.
 _Joseph R. Wilson_—THE OREGON QUESTION                              111
 _Frances F. Victor_—OUR PUBLIC LAND SYSTEM AND ITS RELATION TO
   EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES                                    132
 _Mrs. William Markland Molson_—GLIMPSES OF LIFE IN EARLY OREGON     158
 _H. W. Scott_—NOT MARJORAM.—THE SPANISH WORD “OREGANO” NOT THE
   ORIGINAL OF OREGON                                                165
 _H. S. Lyman_—REMINISCENCES OF LOUIS LABONTE                        169
 _Frances F. Victor_—DR. ELLIOTT COUES                               189
 DOCUMENT.—A Narrative of Events In Early Oregon ascribed to Dr.
   John McLoughlin                                                   193
 REVIEWS OF BOOKS.—_Eva Emery Dye’s_ “McLoughlin and Old Oregon”     207
 _H. K. Hines’_ “Missionary History of the Pacific Northwest”        210
 NOTE.—A Correction                                                  212
 ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
                     NO. 3, VOL. I, SEPTEMBER, 1900.
 _Joseph R. Wilson_—THE OREGON QUESTION II.                          213
 _H. S. Lyman_—REMINISCENCES OF HUGH COSGROVE                        253
 _H. S. Lyman_—REMINISCENCES OF WM. M. CASE                          269
 _John Minto_—THE NUMBER AND CONDITION OF THE NATIVE RACE IN OREGON
   WHEN FIRST SEEN BY WHITE MEN                                      296
 _H. S. Lyman_—INDIAN NAMES                                          316
 DOCUMENTS—Oregon articles reprinted from a file of the N. Y.
   _Tribune_, 1842.                                                  327
 Letter by William Plumer, Senator from N. H.                        336


       PRICE: THIRTY-FIVE CENTS PER NUMBER, ONE DOLLAR PER YEAR.




                         UNIVERSITY OF OREGON.


_THE GRADUATE SCHOOL confers the degrees of Master of Arts, (and in
prospect, of Doctor of Philosophy,) Civil and Sanitary Engineer (C. E.),
Electrical Engineer (E. E.), Chemical Engineer (Ch.E.), and Mining
Engineer (Min. E.)_

_THE COLLEGE OF LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND THE ARTS confers the degree of
Bachelor of Arts on graduates from the following groups: (1) General
Classical; (2) General Literary; (3) General Scientific; (4)
Civic-Historical. It offers Collegiate Courses not leading to a degree
as follows: (1) Preparatory to Law or Journalism; (2) Course for
Teachers._

_THE COLLEGE OF SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING._—

  _A.—The School of Applied Science confers the degree of Bachelor of
      Science on graduates from the following groups; (1) General
      Science; (2) Chemistry; (3) Physics; (4) Biology; (5) Geology and
      Mineralogy. It offers a Course Preparatory to Medicine._

  _B.—The School of Engineering: (1) Civil and Sanitary; (2) Electrical;
      (3) Chemical._

  _THE SCHOOL OF MINES AND MINING._
  _THE SCHOOL OF MEDICINE at Portland._
  _THE SCHOOL OF LAW at Portland._
  _THE SCHOOL OF MUSIC._
  _THE UNIVERSITY ACADEMY._

                                 _Address_
                                                     THE PRESIDENT,
                                                         EUGENE, OREGON.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




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